


Heart's False Start

by sapphosghost



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:31:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 69,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphosghost/pseuds/sapphosghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It begins as most things do: with a kiss. / After a break up with Brittany, Santana moves in with Quinn and things spin out of control. Future fic. Chapter 5 contains graphic violence and torture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It begins as most things do: with a kiss.

They're both drunk, stumbling in the door of a shared two-bedroom apartment in West Harlem. Quinn's hands are in Santana's hair, grip firm at the nape of her neck, pulling her up as Santana uses her considerable strength to guide Quinn up against the nearest wall. Her hand finds purchase on the back of Quinn's thigh and hikes it up over her hip, pressing her pelvis forward and feeling the moan as it slithers up from Quinn's gut to throat to mouth and finds its end at her own lips. It's a sobering moment, feeling the surge of hands in her hair, yanking backward so Quinn can look into her eyes as their hips grind together in rhythmic thrusts. Santana bites her lower lip, smirking to hide how incredibly bad she needs this. Desperation has never been a good look on her, and here, with Quinn's legs parted and willing, she isn't going to let it take over. She rushes in, connecting their lips once again and pressing her fingers roughly into Quinn's sides, pinning her and lifting until both her legs are around her waist, clinging and her body is wedged between Santana's overheating core and the wall.

"San…" she husks, her lips crushing against Santana's teeth. "Jesus…"

Santana doesn't ask if this is Quinn's first time with a girl. She just assumes it isn't, because she's doing everything right. Her hips are pressing up as Santana's press down, her hand not wound up tight in Santana's hair is palming her breast, tweaking the nipple through her Smitty's Bar-issue tank top. Santana feels the squeak she makes more than hears it as her hands grab her ass tightly and pulls them both from the wall.

She carries her to a bedroom—Quinn's, she realizes after she kicks the door open—and there's something in her gut that twists, in only for a moment. This might not be a good idea. The bed is getting nearer with every step, and she knows that once they're on that bed, there's no stopping this.

But she's drunk. They both are. She's not sure she really wants to stop it.

So she drops Quinn on her back on her bed, and listens as the prone girl let out the breath she's been holding and watch as Santana strips off that tank top that still reeks of beer and old men's hands, followed by her sports bra. Quinn is so caught off guard by the way Santana stands so confidently bare before her that she waits a moment before following suit, pulling her sundress over her head and then yanking on Santana's belt buckle, pulling her closer so she can undo it and push those ridiculously tight jeans down over her slender hips.

She's just as caught up in this as Santana is. Caught up and confused and  _drunk_ and my god, when did a pair of black cotton panties become the sexiest thing she's ever seen? Her eyes are cloudy, even in the dark of her own room, and her hands linger on the warm flesh of Santana's abdomen. She's always been a tactile drunk. She likes to touch things, feel them, figure out what they're made of with the pads of her fingers and the side of her face and a long, deep breath taken in through her nose. She leans in pressing her forehead to Santana's stomach, breathing deep, turning to press her cheek just above her belly button. Listening, touching, smelling, feeling, assessing.

Santana feels like something she's never experienced before. She's warm—hot, even—but her muscles make her hard, and her voice is soft above her head as her hand comes round to the back of her neck.

"Quinn…"

She takes another breath, lower and deeper, and there's the heat she feels radiating from Santana's center. The scent of her want for Quinn, and she groans, pulling Santana down on top of her. Then, before Santana can take over like she always does, Quinn flips them both.

"Wha—"

Santana's protest is met only by Quinn's lips pressed to hers, and a grind of their hips together once more. Her sure hand crawls down between Santana's legs, which spread so willingly one might think she'd spent a lot more time on the bottom than she'd like to let on.

There's a pang in Quinn's chest, but she pushes it down.  _Don't think about that now_ , she thinks. Not when Santana is beneath her and whining so desperately against her fingers as they sink beneath the elastic band of those panties that were so disarmingly sexy.

She slides her fingers over Santana's slick folds, biting that supple upper lip she's been trying so hard to resist since they moved in together months ago. It's not until Santana's whimpers become grunts that Quinn slips two fingers deep inside her, and they both let out inhuman moans of pleasure.

She  _has_  done this before. Santana's sure of it now, because her fingers move so deftly in and out and at a perfect pace, and her thumb is doing that thing where it circles her clit and  _Jesus Christ_  does that feel good.

They're kissing, and thrusting, and canting and god, who made that noise? Sure, it's the first time she's gotten laid since… It doesn't matter. What matters is that this girl is doing everything she loves, and her blonde hair is falling around her face and she's glowing and—

" _Brittany…_ "

Santana comes with a name that isn't Quinn's on her lips, and maybe Quinn should have known better. Maybe she shouldn't have gotten mixed up in Santana's fucked up relationship, and maybe she shouldn't have gotten drunk with her and thought that this was a good idea.

Because Santana came, and she said Brittany's name. Months later, and there it is. That thing she didn't want to think about.

She's kind enough to let Santana ride out her orgasm before pulling her hand from between her legs and wiping it on the sheets. But she's sober now, and didn't  _that_  certainly kill the mood. So she gets up and reaches for her robe, pulling it around her shoulders to hide herself from Santana as her friend sits up, panting and ashamed.

"Quinn, I—"

"Don't." Quinn cuts her off with a wave of her hand. "I get it. You miss her. I was a warm body."

"That's not—"

"I said don't," Quinn repeats, and stands by the door, giving Santana her cue to leave. "It's okay, Santana. Let's just forget this ever happened."

Santana picks up her tank top from the floor and pulls it to her bare chest as she stands and, hesitantly, walks up to her roommate.

"But what if I don't want to forget?" she asks, and Quinn can see, even in the dark, that there's something sincere in her face. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe in the dark, after all those drinks, Santana lost herself for a minute. But the sound of Santana's voice crying out Brittany's name is still echoing off the walls, and she shivers.

"It's already forgotten. Goodnight, San."

Santana doesn't move, her mouth open to protest, but there's really nothing she can say, and she knows it. She fucked up, and  _big_. And worse, she fucked up with Quinn, the one person who's been nothing but good to her since all that shit happened with Britt. Her best friend. Her only friend, really.

At least she's consistent. Fucking everything up is about the only thing she does well.

So she says, "Goodnight, Quinn," and holds the shirt tighter around her chest as she leaves Quinn's bedroom. Her own is down the hall, and she stops halfway between them when she hears Quinn's door click shut. She presses her hand against the wall, dejected and dizzy and knees still wobbly from the force of her orgasm and the weight of her guilt.

"I'm sorry," she says, loud enough that she thinks Quinn might be able to hear it, and trudges to her room.

On the other side of the wall, Quinn wipes her tears from the corners of her eyes and shakes her head when the faint apology floats in through the thin drywall.

"Yeah," she whispers. "Me too."

/

Six months. It's been six months since that night when Santana got off a plane from California and Quinn met her at baggage claim. Six months since she let her best friend cry in the cab all the way back to Manhattan, and keep crying long after they'd collapsed on her couch. She didn't ask questions, she was just there. That's the best friend's job. Be there.

And it's been two months since that second night, where both of them cried alone, in separate rooms, over something neither of them expected to ever be crying about: each other.

It's not like they talk about it. After that first time, they didn't even look at each other for a week, until Santana showed up at the Columbia Law library with a sandwich and a Diet Coke as a peace offering, and suddenly things were just back to the way they'd been before.

And a week after that, boom. Quinn showed up at Smitty's while Santana was slinging beers during the Giant's game on a Sunday. The fact that they'd actually made it back to the apartment before articles of clothing were removed was something of a miracle. To Quinn, at least. Hey, at least Santana hadn't said Brittany's name again.

Maybe she's a masochist, getting off on being used. Maybe she's just a horny drunk and Santana is there, and she's got needs too, right?

So it's two months later and she's sitting up in her bed with Santana passed out next to her, the scent of sex lingering in the air. San's arm is draped over her waist and she's snuffling in her sleep, and Quinn would call it cute if she didn't despise herself with a visceral hatred that she reserved mostly for her father.

She sighs and pulls a cigarette from the pack in her nightstand that she usually reserves for the week before a big test or finals and lights it. She blows the smoke away from Santana's face, knowing that she's trying to quit. She takes a drag and stares out her bedroom window and tries to picture how this—whatever this is—will end.

It's almost magnetic, this thing that's happening. She's tried to stop it, because it's stressing her out and finals are coming up, and she can't be worrying about this her-and-Santana thing when she's only in her second year at law school.

But she's Quinn, and worrying and overthinking is what she does best.

So she's sitting there, smoking a stale cigarette to the filter, putting it out in the glass of water on the nightstand. Santana snuffles again and presses her face into Quinn's side, nuzzling closer.

Yeah, okay, it's cute. Even if she does hate herself.

/

_u and san huh?_

The text appears on her phone and Quinn realizes she shouldn't be surprised. Brittany isn't exactly subtle.

It's a Saturday, so Santana is training. She thinks maybe Brittany knows this, and that's why she's picked now, after nearly eight months of radio silence, to send Quinn a message. And this isn't exactly something she wants to try and explain in a text message.

_What did she tell you?_

There's no one else who knows, so it had to be Santana. Quinn's been ashamed to say anything to her friends at school, because for all they know, she's straight, conservative, Christian Quinn Fabray.

_u guys have been bumpin uglies and u dont talk about it_

Quinn sighs and shakes her head, admiring how Brittany can break down a problem and make it sound simple. It's not. It's  _so not_  that simple.

_Something like that. She shouldn't have been talking to you about it._

Her phone rings almost immediately after she shoots off the text, and the last thing Quinn wants to do is answer. But she does, because yeah, she's a masochist.

"What, Britt?"

Eight months, and that's the first thing she says to a girl who used to be her closest friend. She mentally slaps herself, wishing she could be a better person.

"I know you're mad at me, Quinn, but you don't need to sound so mean." Another mental slap. "Look, San and I broke up. Yeah, it was my fault, but you were supposed to be my friend, too. She's forgiven me. Why can't you?"

It's news to Quinn. She didn't even know they were talking again, let alone mending fences and talking about whom they're sleeping with.

"You broke her heart, Britt. She wanted to do something to better herself and you broke her heart."

"Bettering herself by killing innocent people?"

"She joined the Army Reserve, Britt. She's not a fucking mercenary."

She hasn't even had this conversation with Santana, and now she feels the rage of it bubbling up to the surface. No, they don't talk about this kind of stuff. They don't consult one another or tell each other when they're worried about something. It's probably why Santana never told Quinn she was talking to Brittany again, or why Quinn never told Santana that she hates herself every time they have sex.

Not because of Santana, of course, but that's just another thing on her laundry list of emotional problems that she's incapable of dealing with. Thus all that self-loathing. It's complicated, really.

"She's firing a gun, being trained to kill living things, and she thinks that's the only thing she can do with her life." Brittany presses the point angrily, and although Quinn agrees with her on that last bit, Quinn isn't exactly a stranger to guns. Her father was in the NRA, for Christ's sake.

"Britt, she followed you to LA so you could dance, and she got lost. She didn't have a life of her own. She had  _yours_  and  _your_ dream. Maybe she didn't make the right call, but doesn't she deserve to try to be happy?"

There's a sigh on the other end of the line and then silence. Quinn waits, and even from thousands of miles away she can just see the way Brittany's face is contorting. First in confusion, then in sadness, then in resignation, because Quinn's right, and they both know it.

"We're all messed up, Quinn," Brittany says, and Quinn can't help but let out a snort.

"You're a little late getting that memo, Britt," she returns, and again there's silence as Brittany tries to remember if there was an actual memo sent out regarding their respective states of fucked-up-ness.

"I know you love her," Brittany says after a beat, and it catches Quinn off guard. "Just don't mess her up any more than she already is. Keep her safe for me, okay?"

It's not really a threat. Coming from anyone else, it might have sounded that way. But this is Brittany, and god knows Brittany couldn't threaten her way out of a paper bag with a flashlight and a pair of scissors. No, when Brittany says it, it's a nudge in the right direction, and a subtle reminder that Santana doesn't really belong to Quinn. Not fully, not while this thing with Brittany is happening. Yeah, maybe the broke up, but that doesn't just dissolve a seven-year relationship or the love she knows they both still have.

It just means she has to tamp hers down. Because when it comes to Santana, no one can compete with Brittany. And she doesn't want to be the first to try. Or the first to fail.

/

She's used to seeing three pairs of army-issue fatigues in the hall closet when she goes for her coat every morning. There's always a pair of khaki boots by the door, laces tight and tucked into the opening. The duffel with "Lopez" stitched in Camo Green on the side usually catches her eye when she's searching under the bed for her favorite pair of ballet flats.

These things disappear for a weekend every month when Santana goes to base for training, and Quinn always knows when to expect it. There's a calendar on the fridge with the date circled, but it's even more obvious than that. As those three days approach each month, Santana gets more and more excited. She talks about her drill sergeant, and how he's a massive brick wall of a man. She works out harder, adding extra reps of sit ups and push ups to her routine. She runs two more miles every day, starts getting up earlier, drinking less at Smitty's.

It also means better sex and more nights spent in Quinn's bed, but neither of them are talking about that. Eight months of sleeping together on an at-least-once-a-week basis and they're still dancing around an actual conversation. Not that either of them are keen on having it, but hey. It's not like they're dating or anything.

It's Wednesday, and Quinn is accustomed to getting up early for her eight o'clock seminar. So when her alarm goes off at six and Santana isn't there to grumble into a pillow, her first instinct is to check the room at the end of the hall. When that's empty too, she starts to see the missing items around their apartment.

Two sets of fatigues, gone.

The boots, gone.

The bag, gone.

She checks the calendar, and sees that Santana isn't scheduled to be on base for two more weeks. And it's Wednesday.  _Wednesday_ , for chrissake.

She wanders from one end of the apartment to the other, looking for Santana in closets or the freezer or under the couch. It's not until she finds a post-it on the bathroom mirror that she stops and realizes Santana really isn't there.

_Got called up. Rioting in Albany. Might be gone a while. Tell Smitty he's a dick if he fires me for this. I'll wire you cash for rent. Don't freak out. –S_

Quinn can't tell if she means, "Don't freak out about me not being here to help you pay for shit," or "Don't freak out because I've been called up to active duty for the first time since I signed up for this a year ago," or "Don't freak out because my life is in serious danger and I know you're realizing for the first time that this Army Reserve thing isn't all building FEMA trailers and piling sandbags on riverbanks."

Maybe it's all of the above, because Quinn is pretty sure that, yeah, she's freaking out for exactly those reasons, and certainly not in that order.

The morning news gives her the rundown on what's going on in Albany: protesters are ransacking the capital after the state senate passed a bill restricting access to public health, and all those protestors that she remembered making jokes about a few years back during the Occupy Wallstreet movement have taken over the city with a little more fervor than they had before. There are panned shots of fires set in trash cans and cars overturned on side streets. She sees the Albany police in riot gear and the ticker at the bottom of the screen flashes that the state has called in the National Guard—Santana—to help control the situation.

Her stomach flops violently in her gut and she crumples up the post-it in her fist while she searches for her phone. Maybe a few strategically placed phone calls from a near-lawyer in Manhattan can get Santana out of this mess. Maybe she can call her professors at Columbia who have pull at the capital. Maybe she can stop this before Santana is out there in full riot gear, coming up against people who are angry at their government and no seeming respect for the fact that the people they're lobbing Molotov cocktails at are just people doing their jobs.

She finds her cell under her Criminal Case Law text book and the first thing she sees on her screen is a text message notification from Santana.

_Calm your tits, Fabray. I'm fine. Don't call the mayor or some shit._

She wants to laugh, because it was sent three hours ago, before she'd even woken up, before Santana had probably left the apartment. Santana, it seems, knows her better then she thought.

_I'll call when shit calms down. But they can hold me here for as long as they need to._

The second message came in a minute after the first, and she's rereading them, trying to take some kind of comfort in the fact that Santana isn't worried about this, so she shouldn't be either. But then she reads the third and final message, sent nearly five minutes after the first two, and something worse than worry creeps up into her throat.

_Love you._

Something, she realizes, that reminds her a lot of love.


	2. Chapter 2

The bus up from base to Albany is a mixture of tenuous calm and excited rabble rousing. It's the first time her company has been called up for any kind of duty before, and they've been training on weekends for a year, so a lot of the younger, more naïve members of the group are eager to get their feet wet in "battle."

But Santana, who'd once thought that this Army Reserve thing was an awesome way to take back her life and find some kind of inner strength, is sitting on her hands.

She'd gotten the call in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and by eight she'd been sitting in the briefing room on base just outside Trenton, New Jersey. She should be focusing on what her staff sergeant is telling her about the situation they're about to get thrown into, but her mind is elsewhere.

Namely, with the girl she'd left alone in bed that morning.

Yeah, okay, she'd written Quinn a note. And then she'd texted, because it's Quinn, and she knows how Quinn is. But she's still thinking about it just the same. How Quinn is probably sitting in their apartment, probably biting her nails (no matter how many times Santana tries to show her how to file them, Quinn still nibbles when she's nervous) and watching CNN for updates on the riot, maybe hoping for a shot of Santana to make sure she's okay.

And while Quinn's doing all that, Santana's also spent every second since she sent that third text second-guessing herself.

It had just kind of happened. Quinn was out cold, the ring from Santana's phone not causing her to stir when the call came in. She'd slipped out of bed, a bed that was still distinctly Quinn's, despite all the time Santana spent there, and pulled her things together. She'd written the note, tacked it up in the one place she knew Quinn would see it, and then went back to stand at Quinn's door. She wasn't nervous about leaving to do her job. It was something she'd trained for, something she'd grown excited about. The proposition of being a situation like that, where she saw chaos and created order, was thrilling.

But there was Quinn, bare-breasted in bed where Santana had left her. Her chest rose and fell, completely unaware of what was happening, and suddenly there was fear. Not on her own behalf, but for Quinn, who hadn't signed up for this shit. Quinn, who took her in when she was basically homeless. Quinn, who never once questioned her decision, despite the fact that Santana was  _sure_  she disagreed with it. Quinn, who wrapped herself around Santana in the dark when she thought San was sleeping, and stifled confused tears into long dark hair.

Quinn, who took all the shit Santana dished out and didn't complain.

So yeah, that third text message had just kind of happened, because she'd watched Quinn sleeping and something just kind of clicked because Jesus Christ,  _look at her_. Look at that girl laying in bed, and she's been nothing but there for Santana for a fucking  _year_ , in every possible way. Look at her, and try to think of something else to say besides what she sent.

Santana isn't sure that she even means it in the way she's worried about now. Quinn has been her best friend since they were kids. They've said shit like, "Love you, bitch" more times than she can count. Hell, Santana's even gone so far as to leave off the "bitch" part before. But that morning, standing in the doorway of the bedroom and watching Quinn sleeping, had made it seem like they'd left the friendly endearment behind.

It just felt like something that needed saying, after all this time.

It's well past twelve now, and she'll be arriving in Albany by mid afternoon. She knows full well that Quinn's been up for hours, and she keeps checking the phone in the pocket of her fatigues with the hope that maybe she got a text back. That she didn't scare Quinn off by saying what she did, because it's not like they talk about what they're doing. They drink, they fuck, they go about their lives. They're not dating, and they sure as hell aren't in love.

Santana's still reeling from the last time she made that horrible mistake.

She'd planned on college. Really, she had. But her father had wanted her to go to medical school, and that was the last thing she ever imagined herself doing, so she'd begged off applying at all while she tried to figure out what she wanted to do that would piss her parents off the least. Brittany had wanted to dance, and she couldn't think of a reason not to go with her when an opportunity presented itself in Los Angeles. Maybe she could be a singer.

Her life in LA hadn't been awful. She and Brittany had an apartment in West Hollywood, a secondhand Vespa and an aging Lord Tubbington to keep them company. Brittany got regular work as a back up dancer in music videos, and she taught a few classes to supplement her income. Santana had tried the nightclub circuit for a while, getting a few gigs singing in dingy lounges with Brittany and a few drunk old men as her audience, but the pieces never fell into place for her the way they did for Brittany.

She started tending bar, using the assets her father had paid for to help the bar's owner see past the fact that she'd never had a service job before. Brittany danced, traveled, and she slung beer.

For four fucking years.

There are a lot of "what if"s that follow her thoughts when she remembers that day. What if she'd taken her normal route to work? What if she had met Brittany for lunch like she'd planned? What if the recruitment officer had gone inside the office for a drink as she'd passed by?

But she hadn't taken her normal route because there was construction. She hadn't met Brittany for lunch, because Brittany had taken over teaching the midday classes for a sick friend. And the recruiter has been there, on the sidewalk, waiting.

"You seem lost."

She'd stopped, because no, she's not lost. She's lived in LA for four years. Why would he say something like that?

"It's something in your face. Maybe you're not physically lost, but you don't know where you are, do you?"

It was pretty much her silent respect for his uniform that had kept her from telling him to go fuck himself, and who was he to assume he knew anything about her life? But it was in the three-second pause she took that she realized that, fucking hell, maybe he was right.

So she'd gone into the recruitment office with him, and three hours later she was both late for work and the newest enlisted soldier in the United States Army Reserve.

It wasn't until she was halfway down the block that she'd even thought about Brittany and her penchant for saying, "Stop the violence" and how even cop shows on television made her uncomfortable with the number of guns that were brandished around. So when the subject came up when they were laying in bed that night, Santana wasn't surprised by the reaction. Disappointed, but not surprised.

Brittany had made her choose. For the first time in their relationship, Brittany had said, "I won't put up with your bullshit," and made her choose. But by that time, the decision had been made. You don't just tell the Army, "Whoops, sorry, my girlfriend didn't like the idea very much. See you around."

And then Quinn had opened up her home, and despite the fact that she spent the first two weeks in New York crying herself to sleep, Santana had gotten comfortable. Comfortable with Quinn, comfortable in her bed, comfortable enough to stop drinking herself stupid before they had sex every night.

It's not a good comparison to make, Quinn versus Brittany. They're two very different people in two very different circumstances, and history or not, Santana can't put one against the other. It's not fair to any of them, because God knows it'll only confuse things more.

But as the bus arrives at the Albany city limit and she can see the pillars of smoke rising from the city center, that's all she can do, really. Compare, and will her feelings away so she can focus on her job.

It's not until she's cocking her rifle over her shoulder and pointing it at a rioter that she realizes the comparison doesn't exist. Her mind clears as she lines up the sight, aiming for her target's knee because he doesn't have a visible weapon, and there's just one thing on her mind.

_If I fuck this up, tell Quinn I love her._

/

The fires have been out for weeks, order restored and rioters arrested, but Quinn hasn't seen Santana since the night before she was called up. The funny thing about the Reserve is that, even if the situation has been controlled, they can hold their troops in place until they feel the threat has been neutralized. So while the state senate is reviewing the bill they passed that caused the riots in the first place, Santana is guarding the capital by day, and calling Quinn by night.

She hasn't mentioned the text, and Quinn isn't going to prompt her about it. It's scary enough having her far away and carrying a gun and keeping an entire city safe. There's no room for them to talk about something as big as love. Not when she should have her mind on other things.

So Santana calls her every night, and they talk for a few minutes. Santana tells Quinn it's because she's sick of all the testosterone she's surrounded with, but the soft little "Hey," she murmurs when Quinn answers the phone tells her that Santana is happy to hear her voice. She tells Quinn about some dick move Williams made during rounds, or how Erickson's wife is about to pop out a kid and he's freaking out because she threatened to divorce him if he missed it. Quinn tells her about her classes, and her internship at a law firm downtown that's assisting low-income families with immigration issues. She tells Santana she's learning Mandarin and a little Spanish, and Santana teases her about how shitty her gringo accent is. But Quinn knows the only Spanish Santana speaks is what she learned from Taco Bell commercials and the telenovelas she and her abuelita watched before they stopped speaking. Gringo accent or not, by the time Santana gets back to the city, Quinn is betting she'll speak the language better than Santana does.

It takes five weeks of nightly phone calls, a few murmured, "I miss you"s and some chiding on the other end of the line by Santana's squad mates before they're reunited again. Quinn picks Santana up at Penn Station as she gets off the PATH train from New Jersey, still in her Army fatigues and the duffel across her back, and the two of them ride the A up to 168th street in near silence. Santana, feeling like the protector in her uniform and still in the habit of saying, "Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am" to everyone she encounters, opens doors for Quinn and lets her walk first, which Quinn finds endearing, if a little uncharacteristic of the Santana she's used to. They finally make it into their shared apartment, and the duffel is on the ground along with the fatigue jacket and boots before Quinn even has a chance to turn around.

When she does, she's met with hands and lips and tongue and she just melts into it. Santana pulls her in close and presses her up against the wall by the door, much like she had that first time together. Except now they're both stone sober and the desperation isn't masking hidden loneliness or pain. This time they're both just so fucking happy to see one another that buttons pop from Quinn's cardigan and Santana swears she hears the zipper on her cargo pants rip in Quinn's haste to pull them down.

"Fuck," she murmurs, and kicks the pants off as Quinn's thighs wrap tight around her hips. "Eager much?"

Quinn doesn't give Santana the satisfaction of confirming that, yes, she's fucking eager. It should be obvious in the way her lips mold to Santana's pulse point and suck, or how her fingers push up the fabric of her olive green t-shirt, nails scraping up Santana's back.

"Missed this," she says in between little grunts as Santana grinds their hips together. "Missed  _you_."

She gets a soft, "mmhmm…" in response before Santana pulls them from that wall and carries Quinn to her bedroom. There's no hesitation as their bodies mold together and the rest of their clothes are discarded, lips pressing together in familiar comfort. Hands find curves that haven't been touched in weeks and Quinn lets Santana take over, kissing her way down her body and settling between her spread legs.

There's a pause where Quinn feels Santana's breath on the inside of her thigh, panting in quick, short puffs of heat that send shivers up her spine and make her skin break out in goosebumps. Her knees come up, lifting and bending so her heels are on Santana's back, legs spreading a little wider to accommodate Santana's shoulders. She thinks that it will be like it usually is with Santana, hard flicks of her tongue against her clit while her mouth encircles her and sucks, making her come fast. But the pause is long and the breathing on the inside of her thigh quickens as Santana presses her lips to the soft flesh there, trailing slowly up from just above her knee to the crook where thigh meets pelvis.

It's purposeful, each movement aimed at making Quinn shudder just a little harder than the one before it. Santana's arms wrap around Quinn's legs, holding her hips down so she can't buck up and force this slow foreplay to end. She groans with each graze of Santana's lips against her skin, down one thigh and up the other, her eyes squeezed shut and her fingers fisting the sheets at her sides.

"Quinn…"

The kissing stops and she opens her eyes at the whispered sound of her own name. She looks down, eyes slitted and her chest expanding and contracting quickly in anticipation. What she sees causes her breath to hitch, and for a moment everything is quiet.

Santana is looking up at her from between her legs, eyes wide and scared and begging her for something that she's not sure how to ask for with words. Quinn's grip on the sheets loosens and her hand comes up to Santana's cheek, the palm cupping her chin and supporting it when Santana closes her eyes and leans in.

"Quinn, I…" She trails off and sighs when the pad of Quinn's thumb caresses her bottom lip, stealing her words before she can say them and change things forever.

"I missed you," Quinn says, studying the subtle broadening of Santana's shoulders and the way her strong arms make less work of holding her hips in place. "Isn't that enough?"

Santana gets the hint with the way Quinn's hand presses against her jaw, pushing head up so their eyes meet and the bite of her lower lips tells Santana not to finish the sentence.

"Okay," she says, even though it's really not, because she  _wants_  to say it, admit this vulnerability that Quinn brings out in her. "Okay, Quinn. I missed you, too."

She inhales deeply when Quinn relaxes and rests her temple against her friend's thigh. She takes in their nakedness, how exposed they are to one another, and mirthlessly smiles to herself and at Quinn over how this juxtaposes so sharply with everything they aren't saying. But Quinn isn't ready, for one reason or another, and maybe Santana can be okay with that. Maybe she can be okay with being missed instead of being loved. Maybe it's easier this way, better even. Because if she leaves again and she's just missed, not loved, she has less to worry about. She can handle being missed if something goes wrong and maybe she doesn't come home. But if she's out there, calming riots or damming flooding rivers, and she knows there's someone depending on her back home, how can she be okay with leaving that person behind? How can she be okay if Quinn isn't?

So she puts her lips once more to Quinn's thigh and kisses her way to that heated center, tracing the word "love" into Quinn with her tongue again and again. Because even if Quinn isn't ready, Santana doesn't know any other way to make all this okay.

/

There's a tornado in Pennsylvania two months later, and a hurricane in North Carolina six weeks after that. Quinn gets used to seeing Santana's things missing for weeks at a time, but she pressure in her chest only increases as the days go on. She's managing relocation of the victims, organizing clean up of the disaster zones, participating in the collection and disbursement of supplies. It's safe, she tells Quinn. It's not like the riot; they aren't in the middle of chaos burning, they're just sweeping up the mess.

But that doesn't make it easier.

"I miss you" becomes their way of saying what they know they're both thinking. Santana uses it more often, replacing "hello" and "goodbye" entirely, and emphasizing the word "miss" like the more weight she puts behind hit, the more it will mean. It's enough, Quinn thinks. Enough to remind her that Santana isn't there in her bed at the end of the day, and how she's a fucking coward for not saying what she felt when she'd had the chance.

It's there, though. Love. Like nothing she ever felt with any of the boys she'd dated in high school, or the slew of undergrads—men and women alike—that had come and gone while she was at Yale. She was comfortable with Santana, emotionally and physically. She didn't feel like she had to hide anything.

Except this unnamed fear she couldn't seem to shake.

It hits her on a Sunday, when Santana doesn't call her after her shift like she always does. It's almost midnight, long past lights out, and she lays in the dark, waiting for the phone to ring. She can't sleep without hearing the familiar husk of Santana's drowsy, "Goodnight, Quinn."

She watches the clock tick by her bedside, the seconds dragging into years and the sun rising after a millennium without so much as a text. She's a wreck, terrified and helpless because there isn't an office number for the Army Reserve in the middle of a disaster zone in rural North Carolina. So she shoots off a text message that says simply, "Are you okay?"

The day trudges on, and despite her compulsive checking of every available news outlet, there's nothing to be reported about the aftermath of the hurricane. So she waits, suffering through interviews with plaintiff while she tries not to think about how this little girl has Santana's eyes, and wouldn't a child of Santana's be beautiful? If only she would call so Quinn can tell her as much.

But she doesn't call. Not that day, not that night, and not for two days after. Her phone stays terrifyingly silent, as though the entire world knows not to bother her while she waits. Until someone disturbs the silence, and she can't ignore it.

"Brittany, can I call you back? I'm waiting for a call from—"

"Santana, yeah, I know." The tone is matter of fact, like, who  _else_  would Quinn be waiting for a call from? "She's probably not going to call you, though. They took her phone at the VA hospital. She's crazy pissed about it, too."

Quinn can only stammer out her frustration, because all she hears is "Santana" and "hospital" and she really doesn't have the patience to walk Brittany through the proper etiquette when discussing these kinds of subjects with people who are scared shitless.

"Care to elaborate on why she's in the hospital, and how you're the one who's telling me? I've been out of my mind for three fucking days, Britt!"

There's rustling on the other end as Brittany goes through what Quinn is sure are not-so-meticulous notes on the back of a takeout menu. "It's just a broken arm. I guess the embankment she was reinforcing collapsed. I'm still listed as her emergency contact, so the VA in Durham called me a couple days ago. She's fine, just a little banged up and pissed about her phone. They're super strict about them there. Do you think they really interfere with the machines? Like, could Santana have upped her morphine drip using her phone? Do they have an app for that?"

Just a broken arm. A little banged up. No phone. And the hospital called  _Brittany_. It might not have been Quinn's  _worst_ nightmare, but it sure as hell was up there.

"A couple of days? They called you a couple of days ago, and you didn't think it would be a good idea to get a hold of me?"

"She'll be on a plane back to New Jersey by the end of the week, Quinn, chill out. How was I supposed to know you didn't know? Why are you so upset? You're not her girlfriend or anything."

Her heart drops into her stomach, hearing the accusation in Brittany's voice. She knows what's going on, Quinn can tell. The sex-without-feelings thing. She's been there, done that with Santana, only this time the roles are reversed. Santana is the one that wants to talk it out, while Quinn's holding back. And yeah, maybe there's a hint of jealousy there when Brittany says the word "girlfriend", but that's a small part. It's mostly the way Brittany needles at her with her tone, making her feel like a monster for pulling Santana backward. They'd gotten past all the closeted bullshit in high school, and here was Quinn, dragging her back there, whether she meant to or not.

"Maybe not," she admits through her teeth, trying not to explode or cry, she can't really tell. "But I'm her roommate, and her best friend. I'm the one who takes her to the train station when she gets called up, and the one who's there when she gets back. I have more right to know these things than you do. You hate this part of her life. It's not fair."

There's a moment where both of them are silent, listening to the other breathing. Quinn knows she's probably overstepped, that whatever happened between Brittany and Santana isn't her business, but she can't help but be a little defensive on Santana's behalf. Especially now that maybe Brittany was right about all this, now that Santana is hurt.

"How about we don't talk about what's 'fair' here, Quinn," Brittany says, and Quinn bites her tongue in regret. "I called you, you know what's going on. Now do your job as her best friend—or whatever you are—and take care of her."

Brittany doesn't wait for Quinn's response before she hangs up, and Quinn sets her cell phone down on the table. She stares at it, not sure of what she should do next. Call the Durham VA, find Santana? Wait for her to come home? Go down there herself?

Her heart is still floating somewhere in her gut, aching and flipping over on itself. Terror is creeping up her spine, even though she knows that Santana's okay. That's the important thing, right? That she's alive, it's just a minor thing, she'll be home soon?

But what if it wasn't minor? What if it had been worse? What if Quinn had been picking up a body from New Jersey, instead of a girl with a broken arm?

What if she gave herself to Santana, and then had to lose her?

/

The clean break heals in six weeks, and Santana is back to base for her monthly training session. Erickson slaps her on the back when she gets off the bus, and Williams gives her a wary sidelong glance before staring at his feet, shuffling apologetically. She punches him in the gut, punishment for not doing his job and double-checking the support beams they were laying when the embankment had collapsed, then rubs his bald head playfully to let him know she doesn't hold it against him.

"You got some free time with your girl, at least," he puffs as they run their first five-mile of the day. "Bet she took  _good_  care of you while you were a gimp." He winks at her, which only earns him a sharp shove off the trail and a laugh from Erickson.

"She's not my girl," Santana says when Williams rights himself and rejoins the pack. "She's just my roommate. My friend."

It's Erickson's turn to chime in. "Doesn't really sound that way when you were calling her every night. Your voice got all whispery and secretive like you were trying to keep us from hearing you. 'Oh Quinn, I miss you, and when I get home I'm gonna eat the shit outta that pretty pussy, mmmmmmmmmwah."

He mimics her, his voice rising an octave. He brings his arm up to his mouth and makes kissing noises into the crook of his elbow, and Santana stops dead in the trail and pounces on his back, wrapping her arm around his neck until she manages to withhold enough of his air supply that his knees buckle, and she eases off.

"Knock it off, Bobby," she says seriously, letting him up. "Don't talk about her like that. I don't go around talking shit about your ball-buster of a wife, do I?"

Erickson stands up and coughs, dusting off his fatigues before the three of them set off again. His face turns redder than it had been before, and he holds up his hands in defeat.

"Whatever you say, Lopez. But you gotta admit, she's not  _just_  your friend. Not the way you talk about her. Tell me you never tapped that. No, don't tell me. Because then you'd be a liar."

She keeps her eyes on the trail in front of her, arms loose and her pace quick, trying to catch up to the rest of the group. Williams and Erickson fall in with her, watching her and giving each other a shrug over the top of her head. She sees it, but says nothing. She doesn't really want to talk about it anymore.

There's an obstacle course at the end of the trail, and they're assisting each other over the climbing wall when she finally decides they're the only ones who might be able to help her with this. They're probably going to bust her balls about it for a good long time, because these are two bros, not some chicks who she can have girl talk with. But Erickson's married, and Williams has a girlfriend back home in Yonkers, so she figures they know something about women that she's missing with Quinn.

"Say she  _is_  more than just my friend," she says as she pulls Williams up to straddle the top of the wall. "Say we're hooking up, but she's not ready to commit, even though we've basically been together for a over year. How do I get her to talk to me?"

Williams grabs Erickson and hoists him over the wall, and the three of them descend down the knotted ropes on the opposite side, splashing onto the muddy ground and taking off for the second five-mile in the course.

"Just tell her, dude," Erickson huffs, the sweat dripping down his temple. "Women like that upfront shit. They like it when you aren't afraid to be emotional or whatever. I always get the best sex after I talk about my feelings."

"Bring her flowers and take her out to dinner," Williams says. "So you're out in public and she won't make a scene if she doesn't like what you have to say, and she can't bolt or lock herself in the bathroom. Jenny did that to me before. Wouldn't come out for a fucking hour."

Santana can't help but roll her eyes, because it's pretty much shit she already knows. She can't trap Quinn, she can't sit her down and talk to her, because look what happened the last time she tried to say something.

No, with Quinn, she'd just have to be patient.

"Fuck you guys," she says. "What do you know about women, anyway?"

She takes off at a sprint, leaving them behind to shake their heads at her while she loses herself in the dirt and grit and work of her weekend away from Quinn.

/

"You have a pair on you, thinking you can talk to me about this."

It's not like she  _wants_  to be calling Brittany. It's not like she has another option. No one else knows Quinn, knows her, as well as Britt does. And it's been almost two years since they split, and she'd thought—hoped—that maybe they could have a frank conversation about this. They're friends now, right?

"I'm not trying to hurt you, B," Santana says sadly, holding the phone close to her ear as she walks up Broadway, under the guise of running to the grocery store. "You know I still love you and care about you. That never changed. But our lives just went different directions, and this is where we are now. I want you to be happy. Can't you try to help me get that, too?"

Santana doesn't know about the conversation Quinn had had with Brittany where she'd asked Britt the same thing, about helping Santana find happiness. Brittany bites her lip and sighs, knowing that two years should be enough time to get over someone. To forgive and move on and find her own happiness, too. But she's sitting in the dance studio she's come to love as a second home while Santana is across the country, picking up dinner to eat with someone else. Santana is right. They've taken two different roads, and there's no more meeting up in the middle.

"What do you want me to say, Santana?" she asks. "Do you want me to tell you how to get Quinn to love you? Congratulations, she already does."

Her heart does a back flip and she stammers a little. "How… how do you know?"

"You should have heard how scared she was when you got hurt in North Carolina. And how pissed she was when they called me instead of her. Trust me, San. That girl loves you."

"So…" Santana's not sure where to go from there. If Quinn loves her, cares about her enough to be scared for her when she's hurt, what's the hold up? "So what now, then? Why won't she just tell me?"

Brittany is alone in the studio, sitting on the floor, grateful that no one is around to see the way her face contorts in agony. It had been a bad idea, inviting Santana back into her life after all they'd been through. She'd thought that she could handle it, hearing about Santana moving on and being with another person. She'd just never thought for a minute that person would be Quinn.

She's pretty sure she knows exactly why Quinn is acting the way she is. It's the same reason Brittany had made Santana choose: because she's scared. Scared for Santana, scared for herself, scared to be in love with someone who knowingly and willingly puts herself in dangerous situations. But she can't speak to that on Quinn's behalf. She can't give Santana the answers she wants. She isn't Quinn, and she's not going to speak for her. She's not going to get in the middle of their fucked up relationship.

"I don't know, San. But you can't keep living like this. Just talk to her."

Santana hears the sadness in Brittany's voice, how she doesn't want to be put in this position where she's forced to listen to Santana complain about her love life when theirs is still an open wound.

"Okay," she says quietly. "Okay, B. Thanks. Love you."

Brittany covers her eyes with her hand and stifles her tears. "Love you too, San."


	3. Chapter 3

She's been planning it for weeks. She has a script and everything. Well, notes. Structured and written out on three-by-five notecards with talking points highlighted in pink. She'd stolen one of Quinn's from her bag after coming home late from a shift at Smitty's. She wasn't drunk, but Quinn was in one of her moods that had become more pronounced lately, so she'd avoided the fight by going into the living room and sitting in the dark until she saw Quinn's bedroom light switch off underneath the closed door, and she realized they couldn't keep living like this. Quiet resentment followed by rough, emotionally draining sex was only going to get them so far before it ripped one—or both—of them apart.

So she'd gone into Quinn's bag that she always took to study group, snagged the highlighter and some notecards and wrote down all the things she hadn't been allowed to say since she'd gotten home from Carolina. Things that kind of shocked her, when they started flowing. In the dark in her living room while Quinn slept in the bed she'd come to think of as theirs, she poured out her guts on tiny rectangles of cardstock that were never meant to hold these kinds of confessions. They were meant for SAT words and presentations and formal affairs and speeches. Not things like I can't live without you and Loving you is killing me and Tell me what I have to do to show you that I mean it.

She's pretty sure that if Quinn asked her to leap off the Brooklyn Bridge, she'd do it and perform a swan dive on the way down.

The cards were mostly illegible from the tears when she'd woken in the morning, still on the couch and clutching them to her chest. Quinn snatched the highlighter from her on the way out, mumbling only a gruff goodbye before slamming the door behind her. Santana had been left, red-faced and slightly embarrassed, because there were her feelings, strewn not-so-metaphorically across the coffee table and Quinn had walked by without blinking. She shouldn't have been surprised, but she was.

The first day after writing those notecards was the hardest, just recovering from the exhausting act of crying herself to sleep. She hadn't done that in years and it didn't come quite as easily as it did when she was in high school. Like a hangover, really. In her younger years she could drink just about anyone under the table and be up at seven the next morning for a Sue Sylvester workout without problem. After a few years and thousands of hours spent in bars, her stamina was failing her. But the second day had been kinder, and she'd pulled herself up while Quinn watched warily from a distance.

"What's wrong with you?" she'd asked, unable to mask her concern, if not for want of trying.

"Nothing," Santana had said. "I'm fine."

And she was, really, because she'd gotten something out of those waterlogged notecards. She loved Quinn. She wanted to be with her. She'd needed that release, those few minutes of dam-bursting, raging-river tears to compensate for months and months of not saying anything. Once it was out, things became clearer. Quinn fucked with her head in the best and worst ways, made her question herself and question the world and she could kick and scream and rage about how fucking frustrating that woman was, but she knows one thing for sure: she'd rather be frustrated for the rest of her life with Quinn, than complacent without her.

So she'd planned. Stolen back the highlighter and rewritten the notecards in a more coherent, less end-of-the-world speech that would appeal to Quinn's baser instincts. At her core, Quinn was rational. Calculated and cunning and appealing to that would garner more bonus points than pleading and begging and professions of love. Come at her with fact, and she'd crack.

I love you, Quinn.

I want to be with you.

Here's a Rachel Berry-style powerpoint explaining why. And shut your trap for five minutes, or so help me God…

Quinn's probably going to fight her on it, because that's all Quinn knows how to do. But Santana is sure of just one thing: she can make Quinn happy. And as long as Quinn is happy, that's all that matters, right? She can keep on her track to being a big shot lawyer and Santana will work extra shifts at Smitty's in between training sessions to help with the student loan payments. A few more years at the bar won't really matter in the long run. She can work on herself later, as long as Quinn is happy.

So Santana kisses Quinn goodbye the morning of the Bar and hands her a travel mug of diesel, tells her, "You got this, killer," and settles into the couch to wait. Tonight's the night. They'll celebrate, they'll talk, Quinn will be happy, and Santana will finally say what she's been holding back saying.

She has a plan.

/

Quinn is halfway through the second essay on the first day of the New York State Bar Exam when her phone vibrates in her bag. She kicks herself for not just turning it off when she had the chance, because now it's going to bug her for the next hour, and she can't be thinking about, "What if it's Santana and she's leaving again?" in the middle of the biggest test of her life.

They only do these things twice a year. In February, when everything is frosted over and it's too cold to think, and in July, when the humidity is at a thousand percent and you wonder why you bothered to shower that morning. She'd picked February, because at least in February she can layer up and hope for the best. Now she's sitting in the freezing Javits Center on the west side of the city in a giant room filled with other potential lawyers, and the quiet drum of fingers striking keys on laptops is absolutely terrifying. She's worked for years for this. Studied hard and earned her grades and done internships with firms representing both the neediest of families and the most disgusting of men who were actually guilty of their crimes. And now she's just one more kid in a room trying to prove her worth.

At the end of the day, all her work might be for shit. She's just a face in a crowd, and even though the economy is better than it was when she graduated high school, it still sucks, and who told her she could be a lawyer anyway? Who gave her the idea that she could do this and do it right and be good at something like this? Not her father, that's for sure. Not her mother, who only calls to bitch about whatever guy she's dating that's screwing her and then screwing her over. Not Rachel, who was her friend for as long as it took to become famous and stopped returning her phone calls and disappeared to LA with Finn dutifully in tow. When she thinks about it, she doesn't really have anyone. Never has, really. Except Santana.

Santana, who started paying rent for both of them so Quinn didn't have to work while she was studying for the Bar. Santana, who showed up at the library at 2am when Quinn didn't come home with a thermos full of diesel and a hero from the deli near their apartment. Santana, who loves her so much she's willing to shut herself down and let Quinn be the asshole she's being.

Quinn just really wants to check her phone.

Because what if it is Santana texting to say she's leaving again? What if she has to be on the train to New Jersey before Quinn is done with her test and she doesn't get to say goodbye? After that episode in Carolina, she'd made a concerted effort to be there every time Santana had been called up. She'd skipped lectures, study groups. Gotten up at 3am to ride the eerily quiet A train down to Penn Station with Santana, their arms linked but both of them quiet, and then ridden it back home, alone. Each time fearing that it wouldn't just be a broken arm this time.

What if, she wonders as the lines of text on her screen begin to blur together, what if I miss my last chance to say goodbye? What if she never comes back?

She hasn't even started her third essay when the proctor sounds the bell indicating that time is up. She looks down at the blank pages in front of her and realizes that she's spent three hours thinking about everything but the thing she ought to have been thinking about, and now she's screwed herself and she'll have to wait six months to retake the test, and how the statistics for the number of people who pass the second time around drops to like, twenty-five percent, and how she's probably going to cry.

There's no reason to stick around for the multiple choice portion of the test that occurs after the lunch break now that she knows how miserably she's let herself down. She hands in her booklet to the proctor and he gives her a quizzical look when she tells him to "Just burn it." She slips her long wool coat over her shoulders and pulls the collar up around her ears before she steps out onto 34th Street and holds her arms tight around her middle. She takes the block in long, quick strides, walking to 11th Avenue to catch a cab. The wind whips around her, trying to beat her back to where she came from, push her to turn around and not give up. Maybe she might have listened if the phone in her bag didn't vibrate again.

The cold bites at her bare fingers as she shuffles through her bag for the phone. The tears she stopped trying to fight crystallize against her cheeks while they fall, and the burn of them at the corners of her eyes is less painful than the text she reads.

Don't go out with your study group after the test. I'm making dinner.

That's it. No life-changing message of, "I'm leaving again" or "Santana's at the VA." Just that. Dinner plans, and Quinn has destroyed her future over it in her worry. Because Santana has taken over that much of her mind, and she can't quite figure out how or when it happened.

There aren't any benches here, so she puts aside her disgust and sits on the curb, because her knees have begun to buckle. There's something comforting about the position she takes, her knees brought up to her chin and her arms wrapped around them. Her body is blocked from the wind and the proximity to the ground prevents her from getting hit with the larger gusts of wind that sweep through and whip up the trash off the street. From here she can bury her face in her knees and cry, feeling very much like an overwhelmed child, and pretend that no one can see her.

It's New York, so of course, no one stops to ask if she's okay. She probably would have just sniped at them anyway. Because she's in that kind of mood. The so-angry-I'm-crying kind of mood. Angry and frustrated and confused and god fucking damn it, Santana. She didn't sign up for this shit. She didn't mean to become so wrapped up in someone else that she forgets herself. She didn't want this.

She doesn't want this.

It's the most selfish thought she's had in a while, and that's certainly saying something, because she knows how selfish she's been. But it also feels like the most honest thought, too. She doesn't want to feel like this. Like she's carrying someone else's burden, like the end of world is always approaching and she's this close to falling over the edge. She can't even remember the last time she wasn't worrying about someone else, about if that someone was going to come home every night.

She's twenty-five years old, for fuck's sake. She's just failed the Bar Exam, just ruined her career, and over what? Love? Is that what this is? Lust? Infatuation? Obsession?

Whatever it is, she knows one thing: she doesn't want it. Not anymore.

/

Santana is at the apartment when she walks in, windblown and exhausted from crying. Her roommate—friend, lover, whatever—is on the couch across the room in sweatpants and a tank top that almost cracks her resolve. There's a heavy, thick scent of chilies in the air, spicy and affronting. In the kitchen, just to the right of the door, pots simmer on the stove. To the left, the table is already set. There's an unlit candle in the center, and even though the plates are made of plastic, it looks like Santana has planned a fine celebration of Quinn's failure.

She checks her watch, that awful military thing that's black and bulky and waterproof, because she knows Quinn should not be home this early.

"You knock it out that fast, killer?"

She's smiling proudly, and Quinn can see how excited Santana is for this, and how relieved she is now that it's over. But Quinn also sees the blank page of the essay she handed to the proctor, and the look on his face when she told him to burn it, and Santana's text that had made her so distracted that she'd ruined the rest of her life.

Santana's smile fades when Quinn drops her bag like she's been carrying a two hundred pound sack of flour. Quinn's shoulders are limp and her expression is as blank as her exam booklet. She doesn't move from her place at the door. She doesn't have the energy, really. Not even to close it behind her while she stands there, so it hangs open. She knows the neighbors are in for a show.

The moments of tense silence cause Santana to lift herself from the couch and make her way to Quinn. She reaches her hand out in worry, a gesture that should have been welcome and comforting, but Quinn swipes it away.

"Don't," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "Just don't."

Santana reels and pulls back, clutching the hand to her chest as though she's been wounded. Worry mixes with confusion and fear and she studies how Quinn's face has fallen rigid and unfeeling. Her lips are pressed tightly together and her eyes, normally so expressive, are vacant and cold. Hazel mixes with honey and green and gold and a pure onyx center that contracts as Santana leans in closer, for a better look. She searches for something in them that might tell her what she's done to warrant this. Those pupils dilate in fear as Santana inches closer.

"What happened?" she asks.

Quinn feels the stab of it in her chest, a seeping penetrative wound that will kill her slowly and mercilessly. What happened? Santana happened. Life happened. She slips past Santana, away from those prying eyes and the open door and the sudden feeling of exposure. She moves into the familiar comfort of their apartment, thinking she might pull some strength from having a bizarre kind of home court advantage. She stands between the couch, where they'd spent nights watching movies and wrapped up in one another, and the coffee table, where she sees a stack of highlighted note cards in Santana's handwriting. Suddenly this place is not the comfort she'd expected it to be.

"I can't do this anymore," she says, her arms crossing protectively over her chest. "That's what happened. I'm done."

Santana's mouth falls open, and she realizes that she is too late with her carefully thought-out words. "What? Just like that? No warning, just a, 'Thanks for all the sex now get out of my house'? Quinn, please, what happened?"

It's not like Quinn can provide any sort of explanation that Santana will understand. She's being selfish, thinking about herself and her own needs and how much she doesn't want to throw away the rest of her life on a relationship that's got about as much possibility of lasting as her own parents' marriage did. She won't be that girl, the one that becomes the right hand at the head of the table. She won't let someone else define her. She needs her own life. She needs to get back to her plan. And her plan never included Santana, never included military life or all this worry or failing the fucking Bar.

"All I have is myself," she begins, looking everywhere but at Santana, who has turned to follow Quinn's path into the center of the room. "It's all I've ever had. In high school, when I got pregnant, when I got kicked out, when I gave away Beth and lost my mind for a year. All I had was the knowledge that I could take care of myself, I didn't need anyone else."

Santana's head is cocked slightly to the left, her brows furrowed and her lips parted as though she meant to say something but the words got lost somewhere between her brain and her mouth. Quinn sees that kicked-puppy look, feels it manipulating her into backing down, and she steels her spine.

"I did just fine on my own, before you came here. I was fine. I was focused, I had a plan. Then you moved in and suddenly we're… you were… it wasn't like high school. It wasn't a slumber party and telling ghost stories in a pillow fort. It was real and I got lost in it. But it's too much Santana. I don't need this. I can't need this."

Santana is in her space in an instant, that patented Lopez rage smoldering in her eyes. "That's bullshit, Quinn, and you know it."

"You don't get to tell me how to feel," Quinn says, taking steps backward until the backs of her knees hit the coffee table, scattering the note cards. Santana's gaze flicks down at them for only a moment, something protective glinting there before she grinds her teeth and meets Quinn's eyes.

"You need other people," Santana presses. "You need me. You're just too fucking scared to be left like all those people left to give anyone a chance to show you. High school was ten years ago. It's time to grow the fuck up."

"Don't you dare talk to me about growing up."

Santana sneers, her immaculate teeth flashing a viciously callous smile. "I've lived in the real world for years, Quinn. I serve my country and pay my bills. You hide in your books and pretend nothing else exists. Newsflash, sweetheart. There's a whole world outside the Columbia Law Library."

"Serve your country?" Quinn spits it, her upper lip curled in disgust. "You run around an obstacle course one weekend a month and distribute food to trailer trash after a tornado. You're a soup kitchen worker." She hates herself for saying it, because she knows it's more than that, and the slurs are products of a rage she didn't know she had. But she finds her strength building, bolstering her up until she feels herself getting taller.

"How has this Army Reserve thing worked out for you, San? Do you feel like you've made something of your life? Did you find purpose in being a part-time bartender, part-time soldier?"

Santana takes a step back, braces herself against the onslaught. Quinn bears down on her, venom in her voice and fire in her eyes. She doesn't know why they're fighting like this, why after so long the claws have come out and all the things they were thinking but never said have finally come to light. She doesn't understand why Quinn is saying such cruel things, and why she's giving as good as she gets in return.

"You think I like this?" she asks. "That I like being out at all hours in a shitty bar serving beer to drunk assholes who feel me up? I did it for you, Quinn! So you can be happy!"

"Don't put this on me," Quinn says, hissing it low and through her clenched teeth while she jabs her index finger into her own chest to make the point. The words bubble to the surface, all the things she's been too scared to say. There's no reason to stop herself now. The damage has been done, and now she's going for the lethal blow. "You were content to bounce between two half-lives long before I ever came into the picture. You did it with Brittany, and now you're doing the same thing here. The only difference is that you actually love her. Now you're just floating, hoping I'll be able to fix you. I'm your rebound, not your girlfriend."

The accusation silences Santana, leaving her with mouth agape and hands limp at her sides.

"You can't possibly think that."

There's desperation in Santana's voice that makes Quinn lower her guard and face the reality of what she's said. Santana was in New York for a few months before they'd fallen into bed, and that first night, she'd called her by Brittany's name. It wasn't a far cry from there to "rebound," and it was an even shorter leap to "safety net." She gives Santana a sad smile, rage falling into resignation.

"I made love to you and you called her name," she says. "I don't know what more proof you want than that."

"Bullshit," Santana says, quick and serious to show Quinn just how wrong she is. "Bullshit, Quinn. One time, when I was still hurting and I didn't know what I had. You know better than that now. Don't do this. Your problems are no worse than anyone else's out there. Life is shit and you just slog through it day in and day out, but you've got it pretty good here, Quinn. Don't revert back to that scared little girl from high school. I'm here to take care of you, so just let me take care of you!"

"I can take care of myself!" Quinn's shout echoes through the apartment and down the hall, reminding them that the door is open, waiting for them. "You have this great need to take care of people, Santana. You took care of Brittany for ten years until she didn't need you anymore. And I'm your newest project, is that it? You think I need my hand held and my food cut up for me?"

She pushes past Santana, their shoulders colliding ruthlessly as she walks to the kitchen and snatches a rag from the counter. She lifts the boiling pot, full of deep red chilies and spices that invade her nose with a thick steam that scalds her cheeks as she tosses it into the sink. The water splashes against her wrist and she yelps in pain and fury, clutching the burn to her chest. Santana reaches out, but Quinn backs away.

"You think I need your domesticity? That you can make me dinner and everything else will just disappear? It doesn't work like that, Santana. One good night doesn't make up for all the bad ones. My mother thought that way for sixteen years! I don't need this from you! I don't, okay? And I don't need you to lecture me about how hard life is. People have been telling me my whole life that my pain isn't worthy, or I have no right to be upset because there are bigger problems, worse tragedies. You want to know what happened today? I failed my Bar exam. In my book that's a pretty fucking big tragedy. And you know why I failed it? Because I was too busy worrying about you, and if your fucking text message was the last one I'd ever get, to focus long enough on the most important test of my life! So I guess you failed at taking care of me, too."

The wind goes out of her and Quinn collapses back against the kitchen cupboards, far away from the steaming sink. She put her hands over her eyes. Santana stands over her, staring blankly. "This is so fucked up," she says, looking everywhere but at Quinn. "You care too much about me, so you're breaking up with me? In what world does that make sense?"

"You can't break up with someone you were never dating, Santana."

It's then that Santana realizes that she's lost. There's nothing left to argue. Quinn, flopped bonelessly on the floor of their kitchen, has painted them into opposite corners. She's done. They both are.

"I thought I could make you happy," she says. "I thought that if I tried hard enough…"

"Throwing your love at someone full-force isn't romantic, Santana," Quinn says, all the anger gone now and something softer coming back, like concern. "It's passive suicide. You use other people to avoid having a life of your own. You're killing yourself for me, and I'm… I'm ruining my life for you."

"Right." Santana stands, resigned, over her. "Okay."

Quinn hears heavy footsteps disappearing down the hall, to the bedroom Santana rarely used. Her hands come down and she leans forward, her elbows on her knees and her fingers laced beneath her chin, to listen to Santana throwing things about and muttering mutedly behind the closed door. Quinn counts the seconds, distracting herself from what's really happening. She gets up and runs cold water over her aching wrist, then wraps it in a towel. She goes to sit on the couch they'd picked out together, and looks around the living room, seeing all the things that aren't hers. How this apartment without Santana will still have all the trappings and reminders of the past year. The photo of Santana and Maribel from Santana's high school graduation that sat on the television stand next to the ridiculous 42-inch flatscreen that Santana had insisted was absolutely necessary. The framed drawing a child in Pennsylvania had given Santana after she'd helped a devastated community there. Her CD collection consisting of nothing but Bob Marley and Fleetwood Mac. DVDs of Will Farrell and Chris Farley movies, because she has a not-so-secret obsession with the old school Saturday Night Live performers.

The scorch behind the oven after Santana had attempted to make paella while drunk.

The scuff on the wall by the door left by Quinn's shoe the night Santana had come home from Albany.

The dip in the left side of Quinn's bed—their bed—where Santana always slept.

Santana kicks open her bedroom door and the footsteps that return are heavier, angrier, than the ones that had walked away. She appears around the corner, still in her sweatpants but now donning her heavy army-issue boots and one of the jackets with "Lopez" stitched over the heart. Over her shoulder is slung the military duffel, filled haphazardly with clothes and shoes, but not nearly containing everything Santana owns. Her forehead creases as she meets Quinn's eye and gives her one last chance to call this off, to apologize and forget this ever happened. Quinn says nothing, just looks at her blankly with her chin on her hands and Santana frowns. She drops the bag and surges forward, and for a moment Quinn thinks she might get slapped. But Santana stops short, swipes the mess of note cards from the table and shoves them into the pocket of her jacket.

"I'll be back tomorrow afternoon for the rest of my shit. Do me a favor and don't be here." With a small grunt of effort she lifts the dropped bag once more, and straightens herself. "Goodbye, Quinn."

Quinn doesn't blink until the front door slams, and she's left with the scorches and the scuffs on the walls.

/

Quinn isn't there when Santana arrives the next day to collect the rest of her things, Erickson dutifully in tow. His F250 waits out front while Santana boxes up the pieces of her life that had collected like dust around the apartment. Bobby doesn't ask questions. He just takes each box down the three flights of stairs and places it in the bed of the truck, and pays a neighborhood kid twenty bucks to make sure nothing gets stolen when he goes back upstairs. He promises another twenty if they're there more than a couple of hours. He doesn't really know how long his friend is going to take to mourn, because that's really what she's doing. She doesn't need any of this shit she's packing up. It's replaceable. She's saying goodbye to a dead thing now. Clearing out the ghosts and exorcising them.

She gets stuck in a bedroom that's clearly not her own, and Bobby sits on the couch drinking a beer from the nearly-empty fridge while she just stands in the doorway and looks around. She's got her hands shoved deep in her pockets, like she's afraid to touch anything, like if she does it'll reveal itself as a mirage. He watches her rock back onto her heels and then forward onto her toes. Her head turns slowly to take a mental panorama of the room, sweeping left to right and back again. He hears her heavy sigh and looks away before she can turn to see him staring.

"The furniture can stay. She can sell it for all I care. Not like I slept in that bed in a year anyway."

He nods, less an agreement than an acknowledgment of the suffering in her voice. There's anger there, sure, but he knows her better than that. She uses it to cover up the fact that she wants to cry.

She hasn't yet, as far as he knows. She'd shown up at his house in Perth Amboy around dinner time wearing sweatpants and carrying her duffel. He'd almost told her no, turned her away because Georgia was already pissed off at him for something he wasn't sure he'd actually done and he didn't need to start another fight. But she'd stood silent at the door, her back Army-straight like she was in line at inspection. Her nostrils had flared, cloudy breath mixing in the cold night air, when he'd just stared at her, waiting for her to say something. He knew she probably wasn't going to speak to him until he gave her leave to come inside.

But Georgia had appeared behind him, baby on her hip and a ladle in her hand. She smacked him on the back of the head for making their guest wait on the porch shivering, and pulled Santana inside without a second thought.

She'd handed him their daughter and taken Santana by the elbow to lead her to the den. They didn't have a guest room, but the couch there was comfortable enough and she pulled their spare sheets from the linen closet to make her up a bed. When Santana had just flopped into it, dropping her duffel as she fell, Georgia put on her Mom Face and locked Bobby out.

Far be it from him to get in Georgia's way when she put her mind to something, but he found it a little odd that she'd pulled Santana in so quick when the two had never met before. Then again, she's a far better person than he is.

"I'll get new stuff when I find my own place. I won't put you and Georgia out for more than a few days, I swear."

He nods again, but shrugs. "Georgia likes the company. Aren't many kids around the neighborhood, fewer moms. She doesn't get to see much of anyone other than me."

"I know how horrible that must be for her," Santana says, and he thinks he sees her crack a smile.

"You'll stay as long as she tells you, Lopez, and not a minute less," Bobby says, half serious. He takes another drag at the beer, sucking down the swill at the bottom. "She gets what she wants, one way or another."

Santana does smile that time, and shakes her head. "You're so whipped, Erickson."

He grins. "Nothing wrong with that."

"I suppose not," she says.

He sets the bottle down on the table, using an old note card as a coaster. "You get everything?"

"Can't find one of my combat jackets, but I'll get another one at Surplus when we get to Fort Dix for next training." She yanks him by the sleeve and he gets to his feet. She hands him one last box and throws a garbage bag full of clothes over her shoulder. "Come on, let's get you home before you miss curfew, Private."

/

She's gone a week. Brittany has called a dozen times but Quinn doesn't have the energy to deal with that just yet. There are 16 unread text messages, and she wonders just how many voicemails her phone can store before it gives out.

She bounces from couch to couch of each person in her study group until they get sick of dealing with her and very politely and diplomatically send her on her way. If law school had taught her one thing, it was that she was never going to make real friends in her chosen profession. Especially friends from Columbia. It was cutthroat, at best. Psychopathic, at worst. She'd seen enough of her classmates fall prey to other students with few scruples and better connections. She'd been lucky enough not to be one of them, but even these people, the four that she'd paired up with second year during Weinmann's Constitutional Law Review, were not friends. Acquaintances, perhaps. They knew each other's LSAT scores and how many hours they stayed in the library every week and how each liked their coffee. But at the end of the day, Quinn can't name any of their significant others off the top of her head. She's lucky if she remembers their last names.

She finds she prefers it that way as they help her pack her bag and walk her down to the curb where she might catch a cab, if she's so inclined. She isn't, usually, so she walks.

Morningside Park sits immediately to the east of the Columbia's main campus, running from 110th Street, north to 123rd Street, between Morningside Drive at the west edge and Morningside Avenue at the east. It's a narrow park, to be sure, but it's situated on the sharp slope of land that rises like a wave over the Harlem Lowlands. From the west the park crests high above sea level, creating a craggy cliff face on the eastern border. Morningside Heights, the beautifully-architectured neighborhood where Columbia resides, is said to have gotten its name from these cliffs, and the way the sun glints off them in the mornings. Sets of intimidating stone steps climb from bottom to top, and the trees overhead whisper encouragement to joggers as they speed along the paths hidden by low stone walls and tight bushes. This park, unsuitable for building the monstrous skyscrapers that cover the rest of Manhattan, was designed by the same two men who envisioned Central Park. Here, she thinks, they did the better job.

When she's removed from her last place of respite before she knows she has to go back to her own apartment, she walks east down 113th Street from her acquaintance's apartment at Riverside Drive, up to Morningside. She cuts north, along the western edge of the park until she finds her favorite view at 119th street.

It's like looking over the edge of the world, leaning against the wrought-iron fencing atop a stone wall that's older than any of her living relatives. Here, where the tall trees on the slope clear, rather than seeing the blank face of a skyscraper she sees actual sky that looms and reaches. For just a moment, she forgets that she's living in one of the largest, most crowded cities in the world. Behind her the Ivory Towers of Columbia rise up and intimidate, but before her is nothing but openness and the purest form of honesty that Quinn has ever encountered. The sky does not lie, does not entrap or enslave. The sky stays always overhead, always watching, waiting for patiently for someone to notice it. In a city like New York, it is one of those things that can be sorely overlooked.

It's evening, and the sun is setting behind her over the Hudson River. It warms her back in the chill of February's last rumbling breath, while in the east the sky blends purples with blues and oranges. Thin wisps of clouds streak the sky like haphazard brushstrokes above the skyline, and she's thankful that there will be no snow tonight. It's been bitter cold this month, despite a few years of mild winters. She hopes vainly that maybe everyone was right about global warming, and this is a sign that the planet just needed a break from all that snow. It's silly, but she likes to think the Earth is more than a spinning rock in the middle of billions of other spinning rocks. That it has a life and mind of its own and its temperament can be swayed by the billions of organisms that live on its surface.

And she prefers the cold, really. She likes the idea that her spinning rock planet is happy with her, if only for a little while.

She hugs her jacket tighter around her shoulders. It's not nearly thick enough to keep out the dropping temperatures, but she'd been loath to grab any other jacket before escaping the apartment just minutes after Santana had left. She runs her fingers over the pocket above the heart, tracing the pristine stitching there.

Lopez.

She chews her lip as the wind kicks up, and shivers. Hiking her bag over her shoulder, she makes her way westward, back to Broadway and the train, so she can ride alone to her stop at 168th Street. She holds the metal pole in the center of the old-style subway car, because they haven't replaced these relics with newer, more efficient, smoother-riding cars like they have on the eastside lines. She lets the train jostle her for a while before the doors slide open and she walks the three blocks back to her apartment.

Her heavy boots clunk up the three flights of stairs. She turns her key in the lock and flicks the light on, only to step on something small and metal. There's a key on the floor in just inside the entrance, where Santana has slid it under the gap. She picks it up and tucks it in her pocket.

The kitchen has been cleaned, but there's an empty beer bottle on a note card coaster on the coffee table that she doesn't have the energy to take to the recycling bin downstairs, so she leaves it. There are little things missing from around the living room: the picture of Santana and her mother, the framed drawing, the DVDs and movies. They've left outlines in the dust, perfect reminders of what's been taken from her.

The scuff on the wall is still there, though. As is the scorch and the dip in the bed. Quinn sits down in it, looks around the room. She'd failed to realize just how much of the space in here had become Santana's until all the things that were hers were gone. The closet is half empty, and two of the drawers picked bare. There are no nail files hanging out on the night stand anymore, no sweaty Army PT shirts in the hamper.

It's just Quinn, who lays her head down on a pillow that smells more of must than of Santana. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and flips through her contacts list until she finds the one she's looking for. It rings twice, and then there's an answer.

"Hi, Britt," she says. "You called?"

/

It's raining in Los Angeles on the day Brittany gets the call. It's not out of the ordinary that it would rain in February, but there's something about this particular rain that gives her pause, with the buzzing phone in her hand. Something just feels off, and she's unnerved by it. So when she sees Santana's name on the screen, she knows that something is wrong.

"What happened?" Not 'hello?' or 'how are you?' because there's a sense of urgency in the rain that edges her on, skips the pleasantries.

"It's over," Santana says, and Brittany knows exactly what that means.

She listens while the woman she'd once loved—still loved, really—cries over the phone about someone else. She starts calculating the cost of a plane ticket from Los Angeles to New York while Santana tells her about the fight and the cruel things they'd both said. Brittany has gotten good at math, now that she's on her own. She likes it, even, because it never changes. One plus one is always two. Four times five is always twenty. And they can never leave her to join the Army and then fall in love with someone else.

"Britt, are you there?" Santana's story is over, and they've both fallen silent. Her voice on the other end of the line is thick with phlegm from tears and Brittany recalls how her face scrunches up when she cries.

"What do you want me to do, San?" she asks. "Do you want me to get on a plane? Because I will."

"No," Santana says, her speech impeded by her sad-stuffed nose. "No, but I appreciate the offer. I just… I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do, Britt. How do I fix this?"

"Maybe you don't," she says. "Maybe it's time to let it go, and fix yourself instead."

It's not what Santana wants to hear. There's a soft, frustrated exhale and Santana tells her that a woman named Georgia will be in to check on her soon, so they say a quick goodbye. Brittany sits with her phone in her hand for several long minutes before dialing another number.

"You've reached Quinn Fabray. I can't answer the phone right now…"

The beep at the end of the message echoes and dies and she just listens to the quiet, gathering up her words, though they're few. She has so much she wants to say, and a voicemail is no place for such things. Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Thirty.

"How could you?" It comes out in a whisper, and then she has nothing else to say. Not yet. Not in a voicemail.

A day goes by. Quinn doesn't call back. She leaves another message. A long, pregnant pause and then, "I told you to keep her safe for me."

Two days, two more messages. "She didn't deserve this," and "You can't hide forever."

Three days, and she's angry. "Quinn, you fucking coward." "You don't get to check out." "The least you can do is explain yourself!"

And then there's worry. Five days, six. More messages go unreturned. The call goes directly to voicemail now, the phone doesn't even ring. Is it dead? Is she?

"Quinn… please. Just call me back."

Brittany stops calling. She Googles "New York City missing persons" but is too scared to dial the hotline, as though it's admitting something she doesn't even want to think about. There are whole websites dedicated to the missing women of New York. Young or old, black or white, pretty or plain. All equally missing and missed, for days or weeks or years. Quinn's picture could be there next. And no matter how upset Brittany is with how things have played out, she knows she doesn't want Quinn to be one of those lost girls. So she looks at the clock and tells herself, "If she doesn't call by ten, I call the police."

She's fallen asleep on her couch, and when her phone rings, it's dark out. The clock says half past eight, and her phone says "QUINN" in big letters with a picture of them from high school underneath.

"Hi, Britt," she says, casual, as though there hadn't been a dozen voicemails left for her over the course of a week. "You called?"

The equal level of frustration and relief and rage cancel each other out and Brittany's brain shuts down for a few seconds. Like back in high school, when things overwhelmed her and she just couldn't make her mind wrap around a concept. Only this time the concept is a person and that person is waiting on the other end of the line for her to say something.

And then it clicks, like the gears of a clock thrumming back to life when given a new battery, and she starts shouting. First about not calling back for a week, for making her worry, and then for Santana, who's sleeping on a couch somewhere and no, she won't tell Quinn where, because she broke Santana's heart, goddamn it.

And Quinn sits quietly and listens while Brittany raves, because it seems like she's got a lot to get off her chest, and it's good to hear someone else telling her what an asshole she is for once. She's grown quite tired of hearing it from herself.

"She did everything for you, Quinn," Brittany finishes, breathless. "I don't get how you could do this to her."

There's that same soft, frustrated sigh she'd gotten from Santana a week before, and Brittany wonders if they realize how alike they are.

"That's just it," Quinn says. "She did everything for me, and nothing for herself, and I let her do it and gave her nothing in return. We couldn't… no one should be in a relationship like that. Where it overwhelms both of you until you're so caught up in the other person that you forget who you are. And we both forgot."

Brittany thinks hard about that, those revived little gears turning and clicking and she tries to think about it from Quinn's perspective. How she'd gotten dragged into Brittany and Santana's mess and how when Santana had left Los Angeles, Brittany hadn't felt like she was overwhelmed by Santana. If anything, she'd been relieved, because she wasn't burdened by a sense of obligation anymore. She could take that gig overseas for six weeks. She could stay out late with new friends and not worry about Santana getting home from work safe. She'd given all those responsibilities to Quinn, who had taken them on and never asked why, never asked her how she could do that to Santana. Turn her out so selfishly after a decade together. She's gone from accusatory to guilt-ridden while the clock ticks on and tells her that she's got no room to point fingers here.

"I'm sorry," she says. "For yelling. But you're wrong about something."

"What's that?" Quinn almost sounds amused.

"You gave as good as you got. You just didn't know you were doing it."

/

Georgia won't let her leave. She might as well have a tracking device on her ankle. It's work and training and home. Two months of it, and no matter how many times Santana protests that she doesn't want to put them out, Georgia won't listen. She's a stout woman. Dark-haired, probably Italian, and taller than Santana by at least four inches. She's got wide hips and a waist that was probably narrow before the baby. Now she's proportionate enough to be intimidating, even with a drooling infant on her hip. Maybe even more so, because Santana doesn't know what to do with a human that's not capable of feeding itself and the sight of someone that's so very in control of that is terrifying.

She does her fair share around the house. She cleans helps with the laundry and she'll hold The Baby if Georgia needs her to. She doesn't like it, but she does it, because Georgia asks and there are about two things in the entire world that Santana wouldn't do for Georgia: kill someone, or interfere in her marriage.

Bobby works down at the Port six days a week hauling cargo when he's not in training. The way Georgia puts it, he'd joined the Reserve to get the military experience under his belt so he could apply for a Homeland Security position and get taken seriously. He's a 29-year-old man with a GED and a baby and nothing but a decade of hard labor under his belt. He'd wanted to do something to better his situation for his wife and, at the time, the little cluster of cells in her belly that was just beginning to look something like a sea monkey. Bobby had never told her why he'd joined, just that he needed the money. She and Williams had always been quick to fill silence on patrols or in between drills at training. Maybe if she'd let him talk he might have told her.

"I doubt it," Georgia says, shucking the baby from her hip and into the high chair in the kitchen. "Bobby's a very proud man. He didn't graduate high school right off and he doesn't like letting people know that. He's a hard worker, though. That's what he wants people to see."

They sit like this most mornings, at the kitchen table while they fold laundry and take turns feeding The Baby. Santana leaves for the city around four in the afternoon, so she can make it to Smitty's by five-thirty for her shifts. She takes the train into Penn and the 2 down to Christopher Street, where Smitty's sits in between a couple pretentious West Village douchebag bars and the smaller, niche gay bars that are always dark and smell like leather and Drakkar Noir. She'll be there until two, because Smitty is giving her a break and not making her do any closing shifts now that she's homeless and crashing in Jersey. It's that second part that makes him pity her the most. By the time she gets back to Bobby and Georgia's it's after three-thirty, and she has to tiptoe in a maze around the living room to avoid the creaky floorboard that always wakes The Baby. She's learning these little things that make the family tick; their little idiosyncrasies and quirks that no outsider should be privy to. She feels like an invader every time she crawls like a cat burglar through the house, into the den where she's still living out of plastic bags and sleeping on a couch.

Despite this, though, she hasn't made any concerted effort toward leaving. She picked through Craigslist for an hour this one time, looking for a place, but nothing was in her price range or far enough away from Washington Heights to make it worth paying more. She tells Bobby she's looking, and he believes her. She says the same thing to Georgia and just gets this look that tells her she knows Santana's lying, but prefers to keep up appearances. Neither of them really want Santana to go anyway.

She considers staying in Jersey full time, taking a job with Bobby at the docks, or maybe even re-upping her contract early and joining the Corp instead of the Reserve. Bobby tells her she's fuckin' nuts and that she'll get shipped to Azerbaijan or some dark, hot corner of the world and get killed. She tells him it wouldn't really matter, because she's got no one to worry about her not coming back and nothing keeping her here, anyway. No goals, like him and Homeland Security. No family, like Georgia and The Baby. That scares him silent for a while, because he doesn't like the idea of her going to off to war without him, whether that war be in Azerbaijan or Hell.

But, late in her third month with them, when she gets up at the asscrack of dawn to go out to Port with him to ask the Harbor Master for a job, he can't keep silent anymore and puts his foot down.

"You live in my house," he says towering over her while she sits calmly buttering her toast. "You live by my rules, Lopez. And my rules say you don't get to give up on yourself. You won't do that. You won't throw yourself in front of a train because you're sad your girlfriend dumped you. You're fuckin' better than the docks and better than Jersey and I'll be fucked before I let you do what I did and get lost."

"I'm already lost, Bobby," she says, and takes a bite. "The train's come and gone and my body's mashed to pieces. You're just cleaning up the mess."

"Clean up your own goddamn mess, Lopez. Fix your fuckin' life. Fix it or get the fuck out."

He leaves her there at the kitchen table with a mouth full of bread. He steps on the creaky floorboard on his way out the door, and The Baby starts crying. She swallows her toast, and with it her pride, and goes to stop the screaming before Georgia wakes up. She had a long night.

/

Quinn lasts two months alone in the apartment before she gives up. Two months of staring at the scuff and the scorch and the dip and that stupid empty beer bottle before she realizes that even though Santana is gone, she's still surrounded by her, and it's making her question the decision to stop whatever it was they were doing in the first place.

She sends her landlord her notice and starts packing her life into boxes. Santana was the one that liked the electronics, so she sells the television and surround sound system on Craigslist for cheap enough that they disappear quickly. The furniture in the unused bedroom takes a little longer, but by the end of the week it's gone.

She still has nightmares, even though she knows she's leaving. She dreams that she's falling down an endless cavern, and when she wakes she finds she's sleeping on Santana's side of the bed, in the dip. So she wraps the mattress up in plastic and asks the Super to cart it to the trash for her. She'll buy a new one when she gets a new place. A new one that isn't quite so haunted.

She doesn't have a job, and she's got no reason to focus on studying for the Bar when it's four months away, so she spends her mornings and afternoons wandering through her neighborhood. It's heavily Dominican, and the men—short and squat with round, tan faces and thick accents—call out to her as she passes. She smiles politely, but doesn't engage.

The farther north she walks, the closer she gets to Yeshiva, and the tan men who call out to her fade into the stiff-backed Rabbinical students at the College. There are few women attending this branch of the Jewish school, where the classes are mostly related to religious and theological studies. Sometimes she likes to sit on the benches in the median near the courtyard to see how they react to her. Most ignore her completely. Some smile shyly and then move quickly on their way. One or two will cast her warning look, as though saying, "You don't belong here." That's when she takes her leave.

It's up here, at the quiet corner of 192nd and Audubon, that she sees the sign. A literal one, although she might argue it was metaphysical as well. "For Rent: One Room. See Rivke" and then a phone number. Underneath each line is a translation in Yiddish, and she looks up at the building it's attached to. It's shorter than all the others—just three floors—and narrow alleyways run along both sides. A stand-alone building in an area run by large, connected apartment complexes is rare, so she's intrigued. She dials the number, careful not to read that "1" as a "7", and waits. An older-than-dirt Hasidic woman answers the phone and Quinn is inside in minutes. It's a clean, if a little small, one bedroom apartment on the second floor. The stove is ancient but the fridge is new and there are big windows facing west. She can't really ask for much more than that, given the price, and her landlady isn't much for haggling anyway.

Rivke Wanzenknicker wears a silk scarf over her head and walks bent over, her spine curled with age. She's a widow, Quinn learns, with grown children and grandchildren who maintain the building that her husband had bought in the 1950s. She runs a tight ship, and is intimidating despite being a woman in a culture dominated by men. Quinn says, "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am" to questions about responsibility and drugs. Rivke doesn't so much care about background information as long as the check clears every month, so they come to a quick arrangement. Quinn writes her a check for first, last and security and Rivke hands over the key.

"If it bounce," she says, a gnarled finger waving a warning under Quinn's nose. "I call police."

It doesn't bounce, because Quinn's still living on the leftover Bar Exam Loan money that Sallie Mae had so generously given her to quit work and study for the test full time. Fat lot of good it did, though. She'd have been better off avoiding the additional ten thousand dollars in student loan debt and just working 20 hours a week. Now, it seems, she'll have to.

She spends two more days walking and packing before there's nothing left to do but recycle that beer bottle on the table. It's been there so long that Quinn has gotten used to it, or ignores it completely. She's waiting for the movers to arrive, sitting on the couch and staring at it like it's going to get up and walk to the bin on its own.

"You couldn't have gotten rid of this yourself?" she asks, half-expecting the thing to answer on Santana's behalf. "You just had to have the last word, didn't you?"

Quinn huffs and snatches the bottle from the table. It sends the note card that had been used as a coaster skittering across the wood floor, and she stomps after it. She picks it up and goes to crumple it in frustration, but stops when she catches the words on the back, haloed in a perfect circle of water damage. The ink had begun to run and then dried over time, smearing them just enough to make them more disquieting than they already were.

I know you're scared, it says, directly in the center of the card and in Santana's rounded penmanship. Above that, in the upper right corner, is a circled number three. In the upper left, highlighted in pink, is an instruction. Hold her hand.

The intercom by the door buzzes angrily, and she shoves the card in her pocket. She never lets go of the neck of the bottle. As the movers come in and begin to excise her life from the apartment like a tumor, she clings to it, and feels the card burn her side. But she has other ghosts to purge today, and Santana's words will have to wait.

/

She and Bobby clear out the den and replace the couch with a single bed. The desk is moved into the living room along the wall, and the sofa placed over the creaky floorboard. It actually makes a lot of sense, once they're done. After five months of sleeping on a couch, a bed only makes sense, because it's pretty clear that she isn't going to leave any time soon.

The Baby becomes The Toddler over the second weekend in June. She's a year old now, more than just a flaily ball of pudge and shit. She has a personality, developed and tangible and Santana is moderately afraid that she's rubbed off on her. She's a diva who likes to get her way. Pretty much the opposite of Georgia and Bobby. She's not a crier, really, but she'll scream just the same. Santana calls her Baby Snix when one of those fits happen. She trembles and shakes and waves her fat little arms in the air until her face turns blue, she gets her way, or she's ignored long enough to calm herself down.

She toddles now, like a true toddler. She pulls herself up on coffee tables and couches and here, in the park, on the picnic table where her parents have gathered some relatives and local friends for a barbeque overlooking New York Harbor. Santana watches dutifully as she grasps at the bench and gets shakily to her feet, and then, with such incredible faith and no fear at all of falling, lets go.

"Come on, sweetheart," Santana says, her hands outstretched and a bigger smile on her face than she's felt in a very long time. "Come on, Ana. You can do it."

Bobby and Georgia didn't name her after Santana. Not entirely, she thinks, but she knows there was something to it. It's the reason Georgia pulled her in so quickly the night she'd shown up on their doorstep, why she hasn't been asked to leave. She can't for the life of her imagine why, because Santana is the farthest thing from a role model any kid could want, and so she doesn't ask. Nor do Bobby or Georgia talk about it. Bobby'd brought a picture of the new recruit to base for training two weeks after she'd been born, and handed it around to all the people in the unit along with a box of the cheapest cigars she'd ever smoked in her life.

"That's my Ana," he'd said, giving her a knowing look and lighting her cigar. "That's my girl."

His girl, with Santana's name. Or part of it. Maybe. She'd never wanted to make any assumptions, so she'd just puffed on the cigar and then blanched at the staleness of the tobacco and chided Bobby for his poor taste for the rest of the weekend.

It was just easier, really, calling her The Baby instead of Ana. Well, The Toddler now. Or maybe The Kid, because Toddler's a mouthful.

Bottle rockets are set off at the opposite end of the park. Santana scoops The Toddler up and holds her close, in case one might divert its course this way. Georgia sits with Bobby's cousin, the only close family either of them have, who came in from Philadelphia for the event. Williams' girlfriend, Jenny, sits nearby but she's a mousey thing and doesn't say much. Bobby is at the grill flipping burgers while a couple of guys from the unit hang around him, all with beers in their hands.

She'd never really bonded with the other guys in the unit they way she'd bonded with Bobby and Williams. They were the only ones, even six years after they'd gotten rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that didn't care that she had a girlfriend—or a roommate, or whatever she was calling it—or that she was a woman. They were the only ones who'd run with her on the course, watched her keep pace just like the rest of the guys, climb the walls and lift a full-grown man up behind her. It had been a tough choice, really, trying to decide which one of them she'd run to when she'd left Quinn. Williams—Sean, but everyone just called him Williams—was living up in Yonkers with Jenny and she'd listened to him talking about how they never fought. But it was Yonkers, which is probably further both geographically and culturally from New York than Jersey is. Then there'd been Bobby and Georgia, with their weekly fights and the new baby, his girl Ana, and somehow she'd just jumped on a train to Jersey before her head wrapped around why.

Santana is holding a squirming baby in her arms when her pocket begins to buzz. She shuffles around, readjusting to reach deep into the cargo pocket on her thigh to grab for it when she notices that the other guys in the unit are reaching for theirs as well. Georgia notices it, too, and immediately gets to her feet. She reaches for her daughter and Santana gladly hands her over. Bobby and Williams come over, phones pressed to their ears.

"Sir," they say, together but talking to separate people. "Yes sir, of course sir."

She listens to the voice on her phone, giving her instruction, but she fails to really comprehend it. After all this time, six months of quiet and the once-a-month training, and then this.

"Pack your bags, boys," Williams says as he flips his phone shut with a little more glee than she expects from him. "We got shit to do!"

The unit surges together in a very manly show of aggression and war cries. They pound their chests and chug their beers and toss the bottles into the harbor and whoop at the splash. The girls stare with thin-lipped expressions from the picnic table, and Santana just looks at her phone.

This is it, she thinks. This could really be the end this time.

There are only two people in the world she thinks to call when her life is flashing before her eyes. The two people who've given her the greatest love of her life.

"You've reached Quinn Fabray. I can't answer the phone right now…"

She calls again, the shock of just hearing that voice again nearly bowling her over.

"You've reached Quinn Fabray. I can't answer the phone right now…"

Straight to voicemail. She can't leave like this, not without talking to her.

"You've reached Quinn Fabray. I can't answer the phone right now…"

More bottles are launched into the bay and Williams yanks her to her feet. "Put that thing away, Lopez. We gotta celebrate! We're gonna go kill some terrorists!"

She puts the phone away, but doesn't join her brothers-at-arms in their huddle. There's nothing for her celebrate here. She's lost, just like Bobby said, in so many ways. And she's about to get even more lost, in a desert-covered land away from her home, and away from Quinn.

/

She's living in Rivke Wanzenknicker's one bedroom apartment for three weeks before she gets off her ass and starts pulling her life back together. She's Quinn Fabray, a Columbia Law School graduate, for Christ's sake, and she won't let this failing-the-Bar thing kill her career.

She starts by calling her old internships, asking them if they have any positions available. Her former bosses are eager to bring her on as a junior associate, but she can practically hear the corners of their mouths turn down when she tells them about the bar.

"I'm sorry," they say, one after the other. "We can't bring you on without admittance to the New York State Bar Association. We'll keep you in mind next year, okay?"

They do sound genuinely apologetic, and she knows she probably has an ally or two in the offices should she come crawling back next year. But it hurts just the same, getting rejected by people she'd worked so diligently for not that long ago.

She lowers her expectations, then her standards. She stops applying for junior associate positions and instead throws her resume out to anyone looking for a paralegal. Glorified secretaries in the legal industry with only surface-level knowledge of law. The job is more about typing, filing and interviewing clients than getting any real cases. But she needs the money. Rent is due soon, and Rivke has been eyeing her lately every time she steps out of her apartment in her pajamas to go get the Metro from the corner deli. Leave it to the Hasidic landlady to make a lifelong Christian understand what Jewish Guilt feels like.

There are interviews. Many, actually. But she never knows what to tell them when they ask why she failed the Bar. Is it better to have failed because she didn't have the knowledge she needed to pass, or because she's a simpering female unable to control her emotions while her relationship is in turmoil? So she deflects the question, which only makes her ethics suspect, and wouldn't you know it, she's been inadvertently interviewing exclusively at the ethically responsible law firms in New York City. She hadn't realized there were so many.

By the beginning of June, she's flat broke and scarily close to calling her mother to ask for help. She can't remember the last time she ate anything except ramen noodles, and to top things, off she can't afford to pay her phone bill anymore. It's shut off, as is her internet and cable, and she spends ten or twelve hours a day at the Fort Washington branch of the New York Public Library, applying for jobs and burying her nose in Bar Exam study guides. At least it's air conditioned and the librarians are kind enough to let her use their phone when she gets a hit two weeks later.

Waters, Young & Associates is a midlevel firm in Chelsea, representing workman's comp and injury lawsuits that can either make bank or break it. They need a paralegal, and they're willing to take her on part-time so she can make rent and still study for the Bar next month. And, she figures, if they see her working hard they might make her an offer once she passes the second time around.

The lawyer interviewing her, Gary Young, is a mid-sixties Cape Cod-type with thick white hair and a pressed suit. He looks like what she imagines her father would, if she'd seen him in the last ten years. It's intimidating, but she sits with her back straight and her ankles crossed, the way her father would have wanted. The interview goes well, and he doesn't even ask her why she failed the exam. He just takes her references, and tells her they'll be in touch. But he does it with a smile, and that leaves her reassured.

She spends three days at the library, alternately studying for the Bar and staring at the clock above the circulation desk as the seconds tick away. They don't call, despite the fact that she'd given them the library number to get ahold of her. So she wanders back to her apartment with her computer tucked up in her satchel. It's stays light later now, and the humid New York summer has already begun to set in, so her sundress feels light against her skin as she walks up to the front stoop of her building, only to find it blocked by a body and a large suitcase.

"Brittany?" she calls, bending over to try and catch a glimpse of the face buried in its knees. "Is that you? What are you doing here?"

Her friend lifts her head, and in the dying light of the late afternoon, Quinn can see she's been crying. She sets her bag down on the sidewalk and crouches, her hands finding Brittany's and squeezing. It's been years since they'd last seen one another, and somehow Quinn is certain that this isn't a good circumstance to reunite under.

"You didn't call her back," she says, sniffling and swiping the back of her arm over her nose. "She called you, and your phone was off. You didn't call her back."

"I'm broke, Britt, I had to cancel my plan. Call who? What's going on?"

Brittany wraps both hands around Quinn's and grips them tightly, like she's trying to keep herself from floating away. Her big blue eyes are red-rimmed and wide and there's absolute terror swimming there.

"Santana," she says, murmured so softly that Quinn has to lean in close and press her forehead to Brittany's to hear her. "She's been shipped out, Quinn. She's going to Syria and she tried to call you before she left. I didn't want you to hear it from anyone else. She's gone, Quinn. She's gone away to fight a war and…"

There's a break in her words long enough to drag in a ragged breath and release it in a sob. Quinn is slack-jawed and dumb, because this isn't how it was supposed to go. The Reserve doesn't go overseas. It hasn't since they ended the Afghan war in 2014. This wasn't supposed to happen.

"Quinn," Brittany chokes out her name and launches herself forward, pulling Quinn into a hug she didn't even know she needed. "I don't want to be alone if she doesn't come back."


	4. Chapter 4

The 404th Airborne out of Fort Dix, New Jersey is deployed the second week of June. Santana, her ACUs weighing heavy on her in the humidity of the early morning dew, stands rigidly in formation while their commanding officer gives a speech in the hanger. Just outside the massive door is an Army cargo plane, engines being spooled up and bay doors thrown wide. They’re scheduled to depart at 0900, and the minutes are crawling by while the Brigadier General speaks, his words vacant of the reassurance he’s attempting to convey.

You are soldiers, he says. You have trained for this. You are ready to face the challenges set before you, and make your country and your families proud. She doesn’t feel ready. She feels scared and alone, standing in this crowd of men and women who probably feel the exact same way, despite the fact that no one in formation will ever express as much.

Williams, to her right, can’t hide the smile that’s nearly tearing his face in two. Bobby, on her left, isn’t quite so thrilled. His normally dark features are ashen. He thick eyebrows knit together in worry and terror and his eyes lack their usual focus. She can see him checking his peripherals, hoping to catch a glimpse of the crowd that gathers haphazardly behind them.

Toward the back of the hanger are the families, seeing their soldiers off. The husbands and wives. Girlfriends and boyfriends. Parents, siblings, children. Santana has no one in that crowd, who are all dressed the best way they know how for sending their loved ones off into war. Sun dresses and big-rimmed hats to hide their faces and the fact that they’ve been crying. Only a few stand completely stoic. A baby wails from the middle of the crowd, and Santana’s ears prick for moment, until she realizes that it’s not The Kid. The Kid’s cries are throatier than that; fewer tears and more lungs. And then she has to choke on the lump that rises from her gut to keep from crying herself.

It’s not as though this was never a possibility. Part of the decision to join the Reserve had been accepting the fact that they’re a Federal agency. When the core Army units are all deployed, the Reserve picks up the slack. If she’d joined the National Guard things might be different. She’d be on another tornado clean up mission, or down south putting up storm windows against the hurricane that’s building in the Gulf. The Guard is a state agency. She would have been safe.

But safe wasn’t what she’d been looking for when she signed up. If it had been, she would have continued down the road without stopping for that recruiter. Gone home to her one-bedroom apartment with Brittany. Kept living quietly and without purpose. Now, standing in this hanger on the precipice of war, she thinks maybe this isn’t what she’d had in mind when she was looking for that purpose.

There’s a rumbling cheer of “Hooah!” and she snaps up. Ranks are broken and the soldiers begin to mix with the families. She stands her ground and waits to board the plane; Williams has Jenny and his parents, Bobby has Georgia and The Kid. She’d just be in the way.

“No one to see you off, Lopez?” The Brigadier General approaches coolly, the mountain of a man standing tall in his Class A’s and his hands behind his back. Across his chest are a string of medals and accolades that she couldn’t hope to earn in ten lifetimes. He’s intimidating, and he has the great fortune of staying behind. Someone has to run the base while the troops are off playing at war.

“No, sir,” she says, still at attention, without elaborating as to why there’s no one there for her.

“At ease, Lopez. You’ll have your whole tour to put your shoulders back.” She relaxes a little, but her hands stay firm at her sides. “I hate these big send-offs. The speeches and the crying. Sentimentality has no place on an Army base, Lopez. No need for family at these things. Say your goodbyes at home, then let us do our jobs. It’s good to see another soldier who feels the same.”

He addresses her as though he has some intimate knowledge of who she is, despite the fact that they’ve met twice on base and never exchanged words beyond, “Yes, sir, thank you, sir.” But he is her commanding officer and she doesn’t want to correct him when his blow strikes low. It’s not that she doesn’t want anyone here with her. It’s that she’s alienated everyone who ever cared, so now she’s stuck. Alone and scared and standing in the shadow of a man who she might very well become one day. A career soldier with no family and a list of commendations as long as her arm.

She can’t imagine that he’s a very happy man.

“Hooah, Lopez,” he says, thick and formal and out of character of the usually uplifting Army cry. “Make us proud.”

He leaves her there, and she’s grateful for the moment of peace to collect herself. She can’t allow the rest of her unit to see her upset when they haven’t even boarded the fucking plane. _Keep it together. Just a bit longer._

She sees soldiers headed toward the plane, waving as their families get caught behind a fence cordoning off the runway from the hanger. She turns to follow, eyes on the ground, but a hand finds her elbow and she stops.

“Santana Lopez, don’t you dare get on that plane without saying goodbye.”

Georgia has been crying. Her face is puffy and red and her eyes are rimmed in black from her running mascara. The Kid sits on her hip, looking confused and chewing on her fingers. Bobby is behind them, one hand on Georgia’s shoulder and the other on The Kid’s dark hair. He glares at her over the top of Georgia’s head, his eyes telling her he’s gonna rip her a new one once they get out of earshot for even trying to get away with leaving before saying goodbye to Georgia.

“No, ma’am,” Santana says, letting her face soften and a smile peek through. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Georgia uses the arm not holding The Kid to pull Santana into her chest. Santana tenses instinctively, but feels her muscles loosen when her head rests comfortably against Georgia’s solid shoulder. For a minute she remembers what it’s like to have a mother’s embrace as Georgia kisses the side of her head and tightens the arm around Santana’s body. The Kid squirms from where she’s squished between them, removing the fist she’s been sucking on from her mouth long enough to whine as she begins to realize that something is very wrong. Her mother is crying, and her mother never cries. Her father is in his funny clothes and when he puts those on he disappears for days. If he’s gone, whose arms will be big enough to scoop her up and throw her in the air?

Santana watches that little face twist in realization and bright eyes go dark and squint, and then there’s a wail. This isn’t the usual Kid crying, where she battles and kicks and demands attention. This is desperate, confused, limp crying, with real tears streaming down those perfectly round cheeks. She steps out of Georgia’s grasp and reaches out, taking the twenty pounds of crying Kid under the arms and lifting her.

“It’s okay,” she says, quiet enough that the tears subside so Ana can hear what Santana is saying. “We won’t be long, Kiddo. You won’t even know we’re gone.”

She looks over the top of The Kid’s head at Georgia, who has wrapped herself in Bobby’s arms. Her friend stares off at the plane, its engines whirring loud and menacing. They take no notice of her watching them, too busy enjoying their last few moments together, or mourning them. She’d never really been a big fan of goodbye, and she couldn’t imagine that, in this situation, Bobby and Georgia were either.

In her arms, The Kid squirms. She snuffles her face into Santana’s shoulder, leaving a wet patch of tears and snot that Santana can’t really be bothered to be upset about. There are worse things, really. Like getting on that plane. Like war. Like leaving without calling anyone but her parents.

Well, not without calling. She’d tried, every day for the two weeks she’d had before deployment. She has the voicemail greeting memorized now. _“You’ve reached Quinn Fabray. I can’t answer the phone right now, but leave me your name, number and a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Have a nice day.”_

By the time she’d made the tenth call, that last part mocked her. _Have a nice day,_ like Quinn was smirking at her from wherever she was at and waving her fingers in disdain. Like she knew how desperate Santana was to just say goodbye, and she was making it very clear that she didn’t care. But Santana has never been one to take a hint, so she kept calling.

She shuffles The Kid to the other arm and reaches into her leg pocket for her phone. It won’t be much use in Syria, but she feels naked without it, so she’d decided to bring it anyway. And besides, she still has one more call to make.

It rings once before Santana remembers that it’s not even six in the morning in Los Angeles. She thinks about hanging up, feeling guilty, but the damage is done, and the worst that can happen is Brittany sleeps through it and she leaves a voicemail.

Two rings, then three, and Brittany’s chipper voice pierces through the whirring of the jet engines. _“Hi! This is Brittany’s phone. She can’t answer me right now, but you should totally leave her a message and I’ll save it until she gets back! Bye!”_

Santana is caught between laughing at the ridiculous greeting and crying that she can’t hear Brittany’s real voice making a real joke to help her get on the plane with less fear squatting in her stomach. The phone beeps, and she needs to tell someone that’s leaving.

“Hey, it’s me. I’m, um... I’m going away for a while. The Army called me up. I’m flying to Syria today. I just wanted someone to know.” She considers ending it there, but there’s too much left to say and no other opportunity to say it. She might never talk to Brittany again, and if she can’t say it now, she’ll take it to her grave.

“I know you hated me for doing this, and I know that it wasn’t the thing that ruined us, but it was the kicker. I don’t want to leave without telling you that I’m sorry. For everything. For not talking to you, for shutting down, for making this decision on my own when we were supposed to be a team. I just... I needed you to know that I love you, B. You’re my best friend, always.”

Another pause, and more guilt because she knows she shouldn’t be asking Brittany to do this, especially after everything she’d just said. But who else is there, and who else can she trust?

“Could you... could you tell Quinn goodbye for me? She’s not returning my calls. I... I just want her to know I’m sorry, too, for the shit we went through. Just tell her that I’m sorry. Bye, B. I guess I’ll... see you later.”

She snaps the phone shut  before Brittany hears her crying in the message. The last thing she wants is for Brittany to think she went into war scared and alone. She hears the Major call them into formation, and slips the phone back into her pocket. Georgia, who had been stable for this long, starts shaking in Bobby’s arms. The Kid sees her mom start to tremble and then everything becomes incredibly real. She’s sobbing fat hysterical tears, grabbing out at her father and kicking her strong, pudgy legs. Bobby reaches for her and for one full minute the three of them are inconsolable together, without any sense of dignity or shame in the face of the rest of the unit. They are not a soldier leaving his patriotic family to run off to war, but a father being torn away unwillingly from his wife and child. And Santana is the witness, watching them while the men and women of their unit rush into the bay doors of the cargo plane and disappear, possibly forever.

“We have to go, Bobby,” she says, but her words are drowned by the deafening hum of the spooling engines and Kid tears. “Bobby, come on. We have to go.”

He kisses the tops of his wife and daughter’s heads in turn, pushing The Kid into Georgia’s unstable arms before turning and walking away. He brushes past Santana, his head down as he wipes his eyes with the back of his sleeve. She stays just another moment, then turns back to Georgia when he’s gone into the hold of the plane.

“Don’t worry,” she says, pulling her friend into a hug and pressing her face into Georgia’s hair. “I’ll take care of him, I swear.”

“But who’ll be taking care of you?” Georgia asks. Santana wonders the same thing as she runs to the plane, to be carried off to war.

//

Brittany doesn’t wake up early. It’s almost a physical impossibility. In high school, Santana had been the one to make sure she got to class on time, coming over at ungodly hours to shake her awake and press her uniform free from wrinkles, because she’d never really remembered to hang them after her mom pulled them from the wash. They showered together, Brittany sleepily kissing up the back of Santana’s neck and listening to her whine out plaintive little protests. _We’re gonna be late,_ she’d said. _We can’t, it’s already quarter after._ Santana usually won the argument, citing the wrath of Sue Sylvester. But on the days that Brittany won, they skipped first period entirely and spent the extra hour in bed, hair wet and mussed while they giggled together, hands exploring bodies in the way that only young lovers could.

Time changed things. After a year or so in Los Angeles, Santana was more reluctant to coddle her in the mornings, especially after crawling in at five a.m. when she’d pulled a closing shift at the bar and Brittany’s alarms went off in succession at six-thirty. Three of them, with varying volumes and different tones, blasted each morning until Santana acted as the fourth and gave her a shove to bring her fully into consciousness. They stopped showering together, stopped giggling in bed in the mornings. Brittany would lean over Santana’s prone body while she slept on, oblivious, and kiss her forehead goodbye before heading to the studio for her day’s classes.

Los Angeles was one of the most overwhelming places she’d ever been in her life. Probably even more so than New York, despite only having been there a few days for Nationals. She had to own a car and remember to fill the tank and pay attention to where she was going because the traffic was so horrible that she could get shuffled along the freeway and miss her exit if she wasn’t careful. She had to audition for things and it wasn’t as easy as it was back in Ohio. In Ohio she was the best. No one could dance the way she could. Out in LA, it seemed like everyone was better, stronger, smarter than she. They picked up choreography faster. They went to fancy schools. They studied dances she’d never even heard of. She’d wandered into a city thinking one job offer meant she’d be set for life. But as soon as that job was done, the next was not so easy to come by.

So she spent all of her time doing everything she could to make it without being overwhelmed. She took classes and taught classes and went to every audition she could find. She’d pretended to be a giant baby for a diaper commercial. She’d worn a moose costume. She’d stripped herself naked in the basement of a warehouse in the Valley and danced for two guys carrying a handheld camera and boom mic. Santana hadn’t been particularly happy about that one, but it had paid really well and Brittany wasn’t ashamed of her body, nor of anything she’d done in that room. She’d danced, and that was all. Santana just didn’t understand.

Their lives intersected at specific points in time. They had lunch together every day, so Santana had reason to be awake by noon during the week. They saved Sundays for one another, for a dinner in their tiny, eat-in kitchen. Brittany went to Santana’s bar every Thursday night to watch her sling beer and shake martinis for models that weren’t half as beautiful as Santana in a dirty apron. They scheduled time around their jobs, just to be together. It would have been romantic if it hadn’t grown monotonous over time. Routine was boring for a girl who spent the majority of her childhood living by the seat of her pants.

Then, as time went on, Brittany found herself taking jobs that meshed with Santana’s schedule. She turned down offers to travel because Santana couldn’t get time off work. She avoided shoots that started early and ended late, or workshops with directors that were well-known to call for rehearsals at unpredictable hours. She felt herself being held back, felt the offers beginning to fade. Agents and managers knew she wouldn’t travel, so they stopped asking. She resented it. Resented that they didn’t push her, resented Santana for putting her in this position in the first place. And at the end of the day, she still felt guilty. Brittany watched Santana struggle with not getting all the things she wanted, while her own star continued to shine brighter every day.

But still, she stayed. She slipped into bed each night to wait until Santana joined her hours later, smelling of booze and men and disappointment. Brittany would pull her into her chest and hold her while she mumbled about how she hated her life, how it wasn’t what she expected it to be. Brittany flinched at the implication, and in silent anger. Her life isn’t how she pictured it either. She never pictured feeling so trapped.

Lunches were canceled. Weekly Sunday dinners became a whenever-we-have-time affair. Brittany stopped showing up at the bar when the men there made her uncomfortable and Santana did nothing to rebuke their advances. They stopped talking.

Their last night together wasn’t unusual. Brittany was already in bed when Santana got home, just after three and trailing a stench of the bar so thick behind her that it was nearly visible. Like Pigpen in the Charlie Brown comics. Brittany sat up in bed to wait for Santana to shower, leaning back against the headboard with her eyes closed. She must have fallen asleep, because she was woken by an arm curling around her waist and a warm body pulling up next to her.

“We need to talk,” the body said in the dark, and the bottom of Brittany’s stomach dropped out.

“About what, baby?” She kept her tone even, muted and calm despite the fear. This is it, isn’t it? This is how it ends.

“I did something today. Something I don’t think I can take back.”

The confession sounded grave, like something interminable that could not be unsaid once spoken aloud. She had expectations; she and Santana had been unapologetic cheaters in high school, and the instinct to stray in times of struggle was always there. She expected that. She’d been waiting for it, really. Waiting for the day when it would be too hard and Santana would go home with some drunk woman from the bar after last call instead of returning to their bed. Brittany had reached over to their bedside table and flicked on the light.  She needed to be able to witness the demise of her relationship, and she would not let it end in shadows.

“Britt...” Brittany still remembers the pause, how long Santana took after saying her name and how the guilt clung to the air like fog. 

One one thousand.

Two one thousand.

Three one thousand.

“I joined the army.”

It was the last thing she expected, but when she’d looked down at Santana with her arms wrapped vice-like around her waist, and her face a mixture of guilt and defiance, she thought she might have preferred the cheating.

She didn’t shout. She didn’t scream or throw a fit or call Santana all of the awful things that she wanted to. Instead, she disentangled herself from those strong, beautiful arms, pulled herself out of bed, and crossed to the window. She needed space. There wasn’t enough air in the room. Things were closing in around her.

“Why?”

Not that any answer would have been satisfactory, but she needed to ask anyway. She listened to Santana speak, listened to her talk about how she felt unsatisfied and empty and lost. The army could give her purpose again, direction and a challenge. All the things Brittany apparently could not.

“So go to college,” she said, her fingers digging into the window sill until her nails threatened to break. “Take some classes, find purpose that way.”

“You know we can’t afford that, Britt.” It was a flimsy excuse. There were loans. And Brittany could easily have afforded the rent on their apartment on her own, with what she made.

It had been so clear that night that even the lights of Los Angeles couldn’t drown out a few very determined stars, and the crescent moon that waned among them. Brittany stared up at them, praying one would fall just then, just for her, so that she might make a wish and have this be a bad dream. Maybe it was; maybe she was asleep, still seventeen and full of so much hope and promise and she and Santana were still braving the halls of high school together, hand in hand. She closed her eyes against the brightness of the night, pinched her arm and turned.

Opening them again, she found that she was still in the apartment in California, and Santana was still sitting on the edge of it, biting her lip and waiting. She felt her throat tighten and she realized there was no way this was a dream. It was a nightmare.

“I don’t even get a say in this? You’re just going to sign up and run off to shoot guns and kill people?”

Santana’s face had clouded over then, anger and frustration overtaking her need to make Brittany understand. She was on the defensive, being preemptively called a murderer and a criminal before she’d even done anything.

“It’s not like that, and you know it.”

“Do I?” Brittany had asked. “Do I know that? That’s the point of the army, isn’t it? To train people how to use guns and go out and shoot people? And that’s the purpose you’re looking for, Santana. You need that in your life, more than you need me?”

Santana got up and started pacing, the softness of her body growing hard in the darkness that silhouetted her. Brittany watched her grind her teeth and turn sharply at the accusation. “I need _something_ , Brittany! I need more. I can’t be just this anymore. Just a bartender, just your girlfriend.”

“You were never just that,” Brittany whispered, yielding back against the sill, seeing the desperation in Santana’s eyes. “You’ll never be just that. You don’t need the army to remind you of that. We just need to try harder, baby. You and me, okay? You don’t need them. Please, just don’t do this.”

A breeze passed through the open window and Santana’s hair blew around her shoulders, moonlight glinting in it. Her shoulders slumped and she fell back on to the bed, her elbows coming to rest on her knees as she bent over, her face in her hands.

“It’s done, Brittany. I signed a contract. Four years, minimum.”

Brittany’s knees went weak and she slid down the wall beneath the window. _This really is how it ends._ “I wish you’d just cheated on me. It would have been easier to take.” She drew a deep, resigned breath. “I guess you have a choice to make, then.”

“Choice?” Santana lifted her head, brows knit and hands wringing together.

“Me or the army, Santana. Choose. Because you can’t have both.”

Santana’s half of the closet was empty an hour later, and her side of the bed cold. Brittany had laid across it lengthwise and sobbed, because she’d lost Santana and couldn’t even be angry with her for leaving.

A year and a handful of other someones came and went. None warmed that bed for very long, either because they didn’t want to, or because she didn’t let them. It was plain that the sting of Santana still lingered.

She still needed three alarms to wake--a cymbal-crashing monkey, a bad Spanish radio station, and the classic buzzing alarm--but there was no shove to push her up anymore. She learned, on her own, how to survive. She started drinking coffee, despite having never liked the stuff. She set the alarms earlier, to give her time in the morning. Nothing really helped, but she tried anyway, because what else could she do?

She took the tours overseas. Six weeks backing the latest tween sensation paid more than her teaching job did in six months, and she got to see Europe and Asia. She met new directors who loved her style and offered her more work, and soon she was busy that she couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t.

Santana called her for the first time six months later, and she’d said itwas just to check in, see how Brittany doing. But it sounded like more than that, and Brittany asked as much.

“Another conversation for another time,” Santana said, with a tone that sounded like it was accompanied by a sad smile.

The conversation came two months after that, when they’d talked a few more times, and Santana was opening up to her about the army. She learned about Quinn, about how they’d slept together, and it was a blow that knocked her off her feet for a moment. But she swallowed it down and reminded herself that she had no right to complain, when she was the one who pushed Santana into Quinn’s arms in the first place.

It didn’t matter that Brittany felt like she was tossed aside for both Quinn and the army. It didn’t matter, because it was her fault to begin with. It didn’t matter, but it was still a double-tap to the back of the head, execution style. But she was going to be a good friend, she told herself, so she accepted it and listened like a good friend ought. She called Quinn, bitched at her for being a jerk. Informed her when the VA hospital called Los Angeles instead of New York. Stayed out of their business, because she had a life in California, and she was living it. She had work and her friends and she had  really never been happier, because even though she didn’t have Santana, she didn’t feel trapped anymore. She could take all the jobs she wanted without worrying about someone waiting at home for her. She could go out late to some bar that wasn’t the one Santana worked at, where she’d get groped and fondled by men who didn’t know that no meant no. She could feel good about herself and her decisions again, and maybe that was worth losing Santana.

She still clung to what ifs, though, as she crawled into bed alone each night. _What if I’d been more understanding? What if I’d tried harder? What if I asked her to come home?_ But one call nearly two years after their split finally showed her that the time for what ifs had passed.

 _You know I still love you,_ Santana said. As though that’s made her confession of love for Quinn easier to swallow. Her mind went through stages of grief. The agony of telling Santana what she needed to do to get another woman to love her. The depression of knowing that it was really over for them. The rage at Quinn for taking Santana from her. And finally, as they bid their goodbyes and Santana told her she loved her, acceptance. And just like that, she knew what she had to do. She cried, of course, then pulled herself up off the studio floor where she’d fallen. __

So she let it go. For the first time, she stopped caring about something she had no control over. She let go and it was like the world was just waiting for her to do so, because the next thing she knew, there was a someone warming her bed again.

She’d met him at Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a friend. She’d been drawn to his easy smile, his wide, strong shoulders, and the way he laughed at his own jokes even if they weren’t that funny. He’d fixed her a drink and sat with her on the couch talking about music and dance as though they meant as much to him as they did to her.  It had been the first time in two years that she’d been able to forget for an hour that Santana was gone.

Now he sleeps beside her several nights a week, easily making one side of the bed his own. He’s kind and sweet and he makes her laugh, even when his jokes aren’t that funny. He knows about her history and never once asks her to bring another girl home. He’s not jealous when Santana calls to cry to her about Quinn. He’s a small time music producer, which explains why their first conversation had gone so well. He encourages her to get back into singing. She just blushes and shakes her head; she had loved singing back in high school, but Santana had always been the one with the real voice. He shows her off to his friends, and he’s proud to drive her to the airport when she gets a tour. He puts Skype on her computer and they talk every night from her hotel rooms around the world, even if it means he has to wake up at three a.m. He has beautiful dark skin and a profound respect for his mother, who lives in Chicago and calls once a week to ask how they are. She sends cobblers because she thinks Brittany is too skinny, even though they’ve never met.  His name is Alex, and she thinks she might love him.

He’s there, in her bed one warm morning in June. It’s the first day off she’s had in two months and even though he’s a perpetual early-riser, she still isn’t, and he likes to sit in bed and read the paper while she sleeps next to him. From the desk her phone begins to vibrate. It’s barely six, and he furrows his brow when she snuffles in her sleep. There’s no way he’s going to let anyone ruin her day off. She needs the rest. She’s working herself to the bone, even if she never complains. He goes to the phone, sees Santana’s name and sighs. She’ll call back, he thinks. She always does.

He ends the call, and slips back into bed, placing a protective kiss on Brittany’s temple. She smiles in her sleep, and he goes back to reading his paper.

//

Quinn carries Brittany’s suitcase, because it’s apparent that her friend can barely carry herself, let alone a fifty pound bag. She trips up the steps to the tiny, second floor apartment and Rivke opens the door against her chain to watch Quinn help an inconsolable Brittany inside. Quinn mouths an apology before shutting them both within and dropping the case in the hall.

“Britt, honey, I need you to talk to me.” She sits down next to Brittany on the couch she’d shared with Santana not that long before, and is acutely aware of how awkward this could become if she doesn’t tread lightly. She needs answers, not a fight.

Brittany is still crying, her fists over her eyes and her hair pulled up in a messy bun atop her head. She’s in sweats, despite the heat, and she looks disheveled. She sucks in air as her chest constricts and Quinn places her hand flat on her back to soothe her some. Brittany leans into her and they sit like that until she’s calmed enough to hiccup, but breathe normally.

“She’s gone,” Brittany says, biting the nail on her thumb. “She left two days ago. I didn’t know how to reach you.”

Santana hadn’t contacted anyone but her parents until the day she boarded the plane, and made a last ditch effort phone call to Brittany, who had missed it because her now-ex-boyfriend had thought it better that she slept. She’d heard the message when she’d woken, but by then it was too late. The plane was half way across the Atlantic and Santana was out of reach, maybe never to be heard from again.

“I slapped him,” Brittany says, and Quinn imagines that she would have done the same. “I slapped so hard, Quinn, because I didn’t know what else I could do and he was there and it felt so fucking _good_ to hit someone. My hand still hurts a little. Then I packed a bag and got in a cab for LAX. I didn’t even have a ticket, I just went to the airport and went to the first counter I saw and got the next flight out. Because when I thought about it, about Santana getting on a plane and flying half way around the world with a gun in her hand... Quinn, I couldn’t think of anyone else who would understand how much it hurt. No one else but you.”

Quinn is silent. Brittany might take it for pensive, her trying to work through everything, but it’s terror. Blinding, unresolvable terror that stops her hand moving on Brittany’s back and the air from entering her lungs. She doesn’t even realized she’s stopped breathing until her head begins to spin and she feels faint, and Brittany puts an arm around her waist to hold her up.

“Quinn?” She must have blacked out for a second, maybe two, because suddenly she’s flat on her back on the sofa and Brittany is straddling her, sitting on her pelvis and looking down at her with as much terror in her eyes as Quinn feels in her gut. “Quinn, honey, breathe.”

But Quinn can’t breathe. She can’t see. Her eyes have gone blurry and Brittany is a yellowish streak of paint across her vision. Her arms are dead weight at her sides, her chest is contracted in knots. Her heart threatens to tear itself from her chest, pounding with the force of a jet engine against her ribs. Her lungs cower, unwilling to battle the racing muscle to take in the air her brain desperately needs. Her mouth opens and closes, throat tightening as blood roars in her ears, attempting to feed her the oxygen she has left. She gasps, fumbles around, and rolls as best she can before vomiting on the hardwood floor.

Brittany has her bent over with her head between her knees in a matter of seconds, and a trash can at her side moments after that. They’re both trembling, Quinn still gasping for air and Brittany sniffling uncontrollably as tears fall from her cheeks to dampen Quinn’s shoulder.

They sit like that for a while. Quinn is doubled over, taking in what air her lungs will allow until her heart has calmed and the acid in her stomach settles, while Brittany sits next to her with an arm slung over her back and her head on her shoulder. It could have been five minutes or an hour, it didn’t really matter. But when Quinn righted herself, sitting back against the couch, Brittany leaned into her side and stayed there. Seven years apart and a shared lover, and they settle so easily back into an old rapport that’s frighteningly comfortable. She can’t remember the last time she let herself be held by someone she didn’t intend on sleeping with.

Santana had felt that way, at first. When she’d arrived at the airport from LAX and Quinn had met her at baggage claim, they hadn’t seen each other in almost five years. They’d talked, of course, but plane tickets were expensive and time off hard to come by. But those arms wrapped around her body were so easy to fall into, so familiar and calming. Even standing there in the cold, impersonal airport, they’d just held one another for what felt like forever. Santana was so brave, at first, greeting Quinn with a smile and that long-awaited embrace. But as Quinn’s arms snaked around her torso and she felt that warmth of another human against her, the ice thawed and broke, and she broke down. Quinn still remembers the way her body shook, violent sobs threatening to knock the knees right out from under her. But Quinn was there to hold her up, and she promised herself she’d remain that way, for her best friend.

She had a really funny way of keeping her promises.

“What have I done?” she asks, realizing as she says it that she already knows the answer. “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I? She’s gone and I’m here and I can’t tell  her that I--”

Quinn stops mid-sentence because she can’t do that to herself. She can’t say it out loud what she’s thinking--been thinking for a really long time--while Santana isn’t here to hear it from her. She can’t say it out loud if Santana is gone, and she’s left alone to deal with what saying it really means. If she’s going to say it, she’s going to have Santana there, so she can say it back.

“What do we do now?” she asks instead, dumbstruck and scared.

Brittany blinks for a moment, staring up at Quinn with eyes that are puzzling over the many answers Quinn knows she has in mind. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but closes it slowly and lets the air ease out of her lungs in a long, sad sigh. She shifts her weight and drapes her arm across Quinn’s stomach, fingers finding purchase in the thin material of her shirt and clinging there. Her temple comes to rest on Quinn’s shoulder and Quinn can feel the weight of Brittany’s muscular dancer’s leg as it falls across her knees. For a brief and shining moment Quinn can close her eyes and imagine that the body next to her is Santana, and none of this is happening, and he past six months had been a dream she’d had. She’d lift her lids and Santana would be there to push her hair from her forehead and ask her what was wrong, because her face was drawn tight with worry. And Quinn could ease into familiar arms and shake her head and say, “Nothing, it was only a dream.”

But these arms are not Santana’s, and even with her eyes closed she knows this is not a dream. Because even in her dreams, Santana was always there.

“This is what we’ll do,” Brittany says, so quiet that Quinn almost misses it. “We’ll stay together. And we’ll wait.”

//

She keeps her head down and her finger on the trigger while the sandstorm blows outside the humvee. The truck is boiling, fifteen degrees hotter than it is outside. Considering it’s a hundred and ten out there, it makes for an uncomfortable wait in the middle of this rager. Better inside than out, though. She can’t see more than a foot outside the windshield and she knows the gusts pelting rocks into the doors will  have left dents by the time this thing blows itself out. She can’t drive them through it without killing the engine, so she’d stopped to wait it out. Now the four people with her are getting antsy.

“Major gave us orders to be at north checkpoint by fourteen-hundred, PFC Lopez,” the corporal calls from the back, his rifle up on his knee while he tries to scan outside the window for hostiles. “Sandstorm or not, we have shit to do so get this fuckin’ show on the road.”

He’s technically her commanding officer, given that he’s the highest ranking soldier in the humvee. But he’s a twenty-one year old red neck from Podunk, Mississippi and he doesn’t like the idea of a woman driving him around. He’s tall and gangly with some nasty acne scars that mottle his face and make his perpetual sneer seem more sinister than it really is. He reminds her a lot of Finn, with the way he walks like a gorilla and talks like he’s the hero no one in his battalion ever asked for. It’s 2020 and the world hasn’t progressed much since she was in high school.

“The sand will rip the engine to pieces, Corporal,” she says, not bothering to look at him. She’s only known him for three hours and she can already tell he’s a shit-eating bastard, so she won’t give him the benefit. “We wait or we walk the next twenty miles. Up to you.”

The corporal, nicknamed Digger for tendency to get caught picking his nose, sneers at her in the rear-view mirror. “Like you know fuck all about that engine. This shit’s built for deserts, Lopez. Get us moving, and that’s an order.”

Santana glances around at the other soldiers in the car. Two PV2s from her own unit and a PFC from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Hood, Texas--the corporal’s regiment--avoid her gaze. She won’t find any assistance from them, despite the fact that they know she’s right. The PFC to her left, in the passenger seat, was in training to be a specialist with the Army Corp of Engineers when they were called up, cutting him short by a few weeks. He would have been a mechanic, with a higher rank and better pay. Now he sits sullenly, sweating and frustrated, in the seat next to her.

“Sir, respectfully, the storm will be over in a few minutes.” She’s testing her luck, and will probably get a court martial if the corporal decides to report her. But she can’t be the one responsible for putting five lives in danger on an open road potentially full of IEDs and enemy combatants.

The corporal flicks his eyes to the PFC next to her, finding his gaze in the rear view. He cocks his head to the side, questioning him. The almost-mechanic pauses a second, and then nods reluctantly. The corporal grunts and settles back into his seat to continue staring out the window for enemies. Santana relaxes a little, seeing the corporal ease off his weapon, and readies to wait out the storm.

The 404 is stationed at north checkpoint, about forty miles outside the capital city of Damascus, where the US Army has a stronghold within a village full of friendlies. _As Sweimreh_ had been taken the month before by the 3rd and their support, 189th Infantry Brigade out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. She and most of her unit had been stationed in Stuttgart, Germany for two weeks before being flown into the newly fortified village, full of hard-packed dirt streets and sandstone houses. High, electrified fences mounted with barbed wire both keep insurgents out and the population in, and Santana wonders if the locals regret their decision to house this particular military contingent, now that they’ve been there a month and things have become just as strict as they were under the Free Syrian Army. Except, perhaps, fewer raids that ended in rape and murder.

She’d expected a war-torn desert full of death and bullets whizzing by her head. But thus far, she’d seen little action and even less death. Her job--driving caravans of soldiers from drop points in the deserts of Jordan, immediately to the south of Syria, to the stronghold at _As Sweimreh_ \--has given her only the smallest glimpses at what is considered one of the world’s largest current civil wars. She escorts soldiers, rarely picks up her gun, and spends her down time smoking and drinking at base camp. Considering that they’re in the middle of nowhere, she’s often surprised at the many amenities that base camp affords.

The one thing they don’t have is a reliable internet connection that’s not reserved for military communication, or continuous access to satellite phones. Which makes communication outside a very brief window once a week difficult. To Santana’s credit, she’s managed to call her parents twice in the month she’s been on base, but she’s yet to find the words for Brittany or Quinn.

She didn’t hear from either of them, after leaving the States. Not that they knew how to get in touch with her, so she couldn’t blame them. And it’s not like she left either of them on a positive note. One phone call at the eleventh hour to Brittany, and missing Quinn completely before being shipped off to the most dangerous place on earth probably didn’t endear her to them. But still, she tried week after week to muster up the courage to use some of her allotted twenty minutes for either of them. And, week after week without fail, she couldn’t do it.

Bobby had tried to brighten her spirits by pulling her in on a call home with him. She’d listened while Georgia complained about The Kid running circles around her now, and how she’s started making noises that almost sound like words. Bobby got upset, knowing he’d probably miss it, and made Georgia promise to follow Ana around the house with a video camera. She did, and Santana left them for some time alone, feeling like a third wheel.

 Williams had been good comic relief during this whole situation. Nothing seemed to dampen his spirit. Neither the heat nor the boredom nor the endless hurry-up-and-wait attitude that had settled over the base. No one had orders to move on Damascus, so until they did, they all just waited. Williams somehow managed to organize a hundred-man poker tournament within a few hours of being in camp, and it amazed Santana that, a month later, he was still keeping everyone entertained.

Sitting in the 125-degree humvee with the storm raging around her and no friendly faces in sight makes her long for the comfort of her cot back on base and her two best friends’ company. Most trips were like this, though. As a woman in the military, she was often brushed off or given the cold shoulder. On more than one occasion she’d been harassed, propositioned and even groped by the men in her convoy. But with little protection afforded for women in uniform, she sucked it up and remained silent. Of course she’d vent to Bobby and Williams after her shift, and it was usually a few days later that she saw her harasser with a black eye and a limp. She hated that she needed protection, but at the same time couldn’t begrudge them their defense. So she didn’t question it, thanked them silently, and wished she had the nerve to take care of it herself. Taking care of it herself, however, would probably only make things worse. At least this way, the guy knew better than to try something again.

Looking back at the corporal, she can tell right off that he would have been a groper had she not pissed him off early on. He had that entitled look about him. It also meant he could be violent, if she’d tried to stop him, or if she’d pushed too hard against his orders. She’d probably narrowly sidestepped a nasty confrontation.

She reaches inside her flak jacket, to the interior pocket where soldiers usually keep pictures of their families or their girlfriends. Little tokens from home to remind the soldiers what they’re fighting for, and fighting to go back to. Santana doesn’t have photos of the things she cares about. Most of her memories are intangible, things can’t can’t be captured on film. The quirk of someone’s eyebrow. The high trill of a laugh. The soft tremble of a finger trailing across bare skin. Those kinds of things aren’t meant for photographs. But she still had one thing worth holding on to. Something she hopes she’ll still be able to make use of one day.

Santana pulls a stack of note cards from the pocket, sealed tightly inside a plastic ziploc bag. They’re worn, the edges foxed and the corners dog-eared from thousands of miles of travel and a month in the desert heat, but they’re readable, and almost complete. There were ten of them, in the beginning. She’d lost one somewhere along the way, but she still remembers what it said.

_I know you’re scared._

It was the third card, with a note in the corner to take Quinn’s hand when she said it. The one after it prompts her to squeeze that hand, and say, _I’m scared, too._ Not that she’d ever gotten the chance. But the longer she sits out here in the desert, the more she wishes she’d pushed Quinn harder that cold day in February. Quinn had said that throwing your love at someone full force wasn’t romantic; that it was passive suicide and Santana was killing herself for something--someone--she could never have. But Santana still doesn’t think that’s true, looking at these cards and remembering the one fact that remained unspoken. Quinn was scared. Of what, of who, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she needed to get over that fear before anything between them would happen. The same way Santana had gotten over her fear to be with Brittany.

But she didn’t want to start with comparisons again. Not out here, in the middle of the desert, where she’s got nothing but time to think about all the mistakes she’s made with both of them. So she tucks the cards away and hugs her rifle closer.

The storm eases up half an hour later, dulling the roar of the wind to a brisk breeze that blows dust up off the road, but doesn’t endanger the convoy. The corporal kicks the back of her seat and points the muzzle of his rifle out the windshield.

“Move it, Lopez.”

She starts the massive humvee engine, listens to it purr, and pushes them onward, back to base.

//

Brittany is still in the same spot on the sofa she’d been sitting in when Quinn left that morning, staring blankly at CNN coverage of roadside bombings and troop deployments. There aren’t any specifics about which unit is where, so she just assumes that every dead soldier is Santana until one of the anchors tells her otherwise.

Quinn drops her bag on the table near the door and leans over the back of the couch to assess the situation. Brittany is still in pajamas (the same shorts and tank top she’s worn all week), and her hair is a three-day rat’s next of tangles thrown into a messy bun on top of her head. She’s been chewing her lip so much that’s it’s begun to chap, and her face is drawn.

“Did you eat today?” Quinn asks, and Brittany jumps, surprised to find a face so close to her own.

“I had cereal,” she says, returning her eyes to the television.

“When?”

“This morning.”

Quinn sighs heavily. It’s after six, and she’s tired from a very long day at the firm. She’d thought that being a paralegal would be easy, given her background. She’d thought that she would be able to come home and relax, but the stress of each deposition and all the filing and faxing and coordination of a hundred different cases at once has left her brain both tired and wired. She supposes she should just be grateful to have a job at all, and someone to sit with when the sun sets and the silence feels overwhelming. But she can’t settle when she comes home. Not when this is what she comes home to.

“You can’t keep doing this, Britt,” she says.

“Doing what?”

“You know what.”

Brittany says nothing and changes the channel from CNN to MSNBC when it cuts to commercial. That’s on commercial, too, so she switches to Fox News, even though she knows she doesn’t like the way they talk about gay people. Quinn watches her grimace before she flips back to CNN and watches previews for Anderson Cooper’s eighth season premiere in September. She throws the remote down on the couch next to her and pulls her knees up to her chin.

It’s been a month, since Brittany had shown up on her stoop. It had started out fine, the two of them leaning on one another while they mourned for someone that wasn’t even dead. But Brittany never pulled herself out of it, while Quinn had been forced to start living her life again when Waters, Young & Associates offered her a job three days later. Now she works 30 hours a week while Brittany sits in her apartment and watches news coverage of a civil war that she doesn’t even understand. She doesn’t have a job, despite the many contacts she has around the city after all her touring. And none of Quinn’s encouragements to the effect will make her move from that couch.

“What if something happens while I’m out?” she asks when Quinn suggests a teaching gig in midtown, and for just a moment Quinn forgets that Brittany is twenty-six years old. They’re sixteen again, and Quinn is explaining how the world works the way she might explain to a child. “What happens if she tries to call me again and I’m not there to answer?”

“She’s in Syria, honey,” Quinn says as evenly as she can, tempering her frustration. “The cell service isn’t that great there. And CNN isn’t going to tell you anything before the army informs her parents, and you know we’ll be their first phone call.”

The reassurances don’t seem to help, because here she sits, unwashed and starving herself with worry over something neither of them know will actually happen. And Quinn doesn’t want to think about it, so she grabs an apple from the fridge and sits at the small table in the open space between the couch and the kitchen. She cracks open one of her many Bar exam study guides piled there, and immerses herself in the only distraction she has from what feels like a constant and insuppressible battery of regret.

The Bar is in exactly one week and she can’t afford to keep wallowing like Brittany is, even if she wants to. Worry cost her too much the last time, and she isn’t prepared to deal with what might happen if she fails again. She doesn’t have the resources to keep trying, to spend six more months on top of the year she’s already dedicated to studying. This is it; one more shot at everything she’s been preparing for for eight years. Now is not the time to fuck it up.

But the television is loud and she can hear the newscasters discussing the length of the war and troop deployments at record numbers, and it’s all punctuated with sound bytes of machine gun fire and explosions. Quinn looks over at Brittany, who is watching and wincing and grinding her teeth, and she realizes that neither of them are going to be able to function properly if this keeps up. She gets to her feet and snatches the remote from the couch. The television goes blank and Brittany’s head snaps to attention.

“Turn it back on!” she squeals, sounding more like a child having a tantrum than a grown woman.

“No,” Quinn says, crossing her arms. “We can’t live like this, Brittany. I won’t live like this. There is absolutely nothing we can do for her, and what would she say if she saw you like this?”

Brittany’s mouth hangs open in horror, her eyes flicking back and forth between Quinn and the television as though she could will it back to life with her mind. Quinn waits patiently, tapping her toe.

“Well?” she prompts, and Brittany seems to have forgotten the question. “What would she say, Britt? You haven’t showered in days. You don’t move from that couch for anything other than food and the bathroom. You quit your job and stopped dancing completely. It’s been a month, Brittany. Get up. Get off the couch, and go take a shower.”

Brittany sits stubbornly on the couch, her legs crossed beneath and her and her arms folded over her chest. She’s gone from inconsolable to petulant so quickly that Quinn has to remind herself that Brittany is an adult, and not a child in need of a time out. She looks for a way to change the subject, to refocus Brittany on forward motion, instead of the black television screen. She spots Brittany’s phone on the coffee table and snatches it up, hearing a tiny squeak of disapproval. She brings the touch screen to life and purses her lips.

“Another new voicemail from Alex. Looks like a couple texts, too. Are you ever going to call him back?”

It’s enough to get Brittany up off the couch, and that’s a start. She swipes the phone from Quinn’s hand and glares, flipping through the history and deleting text and voicemail alike. “It’s none of your business,” she says, shoving past Quinn to the kitchen, busying herself by throwing three days’ worth of dishes around in the sink.

“If it’s going on in my apartment, it’s my business.” Quinn follows her and watches the violent attack of sponge on dish, fearing that she might be headed to IKEA to buy a new set soon. “You didn’t even look at what he had to say.”

“I know what he had to say,” Brittany sneers. “‘Baby, I’m so sorry. Baby, please forgive me. Baby, baby, baby.’ I don’t need his apologies. I need that phone call back. I need to hear her voice and to tell her it’s going to be okay. I need her to be here, where it’s safe. I need her to never have joined the army in the first place. I need her to have chosen me, instead of guns and war and... _you._ ”

She’s crying into the sink, her hands working the sponge over the same clean plate again and again, and Quinn doesn’t know what to do. She stands there, arms limp at her sides, mouth open but silent. She puts her back against the wall, thinking it might protect her somehow, but she has nothing to hold onto to keep her up, so she just leans. Brittany doesn’t look up from her dish, just keeps scrubbing while the tears for tracks through the blush of her cheeks.

“I spent half my life loving her,” she says, and some of the anger has gone, worked into the plate she still cleans. “I loved her so much I thought my chest would burst. But she didn’t think that was enough, so she left me. And ran right to you, who treated her so horribly and made her question herself and then just when she thought maybe she had a real shot with you, you threw it in her face. I don’t get it, Quinn. I don’t get how you could love her so much and be so cruel.”

“I don’t--”

“Don’t you dare lie to me.” Brittany turns on her, her eyes red-ringed and tired, spitting venom again. “You love her like I love her and you ruined it. And now you’re going to tell me why, because just looking at you hurts me, but I don’t have anywhere else to go. I need you to explain it, because it’s driving me crazy and I deserve the truth.”

There’s nothing she can say. No excuse will do, and no truth will ever be enough to soothe the wound she’s reopened. She knows how Brittany had tried to move on, how Santana called her and told her everything about them, rubbed salt in it and made any sort of closure impossible. That part wasn’t her fault. But she’d just made things worse by being the one that Santana had leaned on, in the aftermath. By being the one Santana wanted, even for a little while. But she has to say something, because Brittany is right. She deserves the truth.

“I’m not strong,” she says, and her hands start to shake. “I never have been. I put on a good show, you know that. But at the end of the day I’m just treading water, and I can’t take anyone with me. We’d both drown if I tried. It was better that she let me go than go down like that. I pushed her away because I wasn’t strong enough for her. Not like you.”

She doesn’t notice she’s slipped to the ground until she realizes that Brittany is looking down at her, plate in hand, dripping water on the linoleum. She lowers herself down, legs folding beneath her to sit against the opposite wall, water and suds up to her elbows. She’s not crying anymore, which is something. But she shakes her head and sighs.

“You were strong enough to carry her when I couldn’t. Maybe I should thank you for that.” She stops, looks at the plate she’s cradling like an infant, perfectly clean and reflecting her own face back at her, then shatters it on the floor next to her.

“But I’m still pissed at you for fucking my girl.”

//

Williams throws down a full house and chomps on the soggy end of an Israeli cigar like he’s just won the jackpot at Caesar’s Palace, and not twenty bucks and a carton of Marlboros off a specialist from the 3rd. The specialist reacts in kind, as if he’s lost his life savings to a card counter at the tables. To be fair, twenty bucks and the carton of cigarettes are precious commodities out here, when cash and cigarettes are two different and equally valuable forms of currency. It’s a little like prison in that way, but Santana wouldn’t say that out loud.

Bobby immediately steals one of the packs out of Williams’ carton and takes a step outside the flap of the rec tent. He puts a finger across his lips to shush her when she follows him and gives him a sidelong glance.

“Don’t tell Georgia,” he says, as though Santana had any way of squealing on him to his wife. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

She doesn’t blame him for taking up the habit. She’d done it too, after four months of sweating her ass off, constantly covered in sand with nothing to do but schlep uptight officers and lead convoys of new recruits over the Jordanian border. The entire unit had been sitting on its hands since it got to this godforsaken hellhole, listening for whispers of troop movements across the country but hearing nothing the winds blowing sand and rocks to pelt the panels of their rec tents. She in turn steals a cigarette from the stolen pack and grins at him.

“You just make sure you don’t take this habit home to The Kid, Bobby,” she says, lighting up with a flick of Williams’ Zippo and inhaling a long drag of the tobacco. “The last thing that girl needs is a gorilla for a dad _and_ lung cancer from second-hand smoke.”

He smacks at her arm and she dodges,  putting up her fists and bouncing on the balls of her feet like a prizefighter. He matches stance inside the already crowded rec tent, knocking a few people out of the way in the process. A circle clears around them, thinking this playact is a real fight, and they grin at one another before Santana dives headfirst into Bobby’s stomach and takes him to the ground. He falls, landing under her and screaming, “Medic! Medic! She broke me, the cow! I’m broken!”

No medic actually comes, but the crowd rolls their eyes and disperses quickly enough, not getting the excitement they were hoping for out of Santana and Bobby.

“You’d think they wouldn’t be so eager to see a fight,” she says, standing and pulling Bobby up behind her. Williams has already started another game, sharking a private from the 189th and the same mottle-faced corporal Santana had driven into camp a few months before. “Everyone’s restless, but no one actually wants to see bloodshed, do they?”

Bobby shrugs and goes to light his cigarette, only to realize it’s snapped in their playfight. He lights what’s left with a metallic flick of the Zippo before tucking it into his pocket. She knows Williams will probably never see it again. “I think they’d like to see anything, if it means we get to stop sitting on our asses in a godforsaken desert in the middle of nowhere. Everyone had a lot of expectations when we shipped out, y’know? Like... adrenaline rushes and patrols and getting shot at by Syrians. Instead all we’ve gotten is a late-night raid and one very poor attempt at a kidnapping. Still can’t believe they promoted you for that.”

It wasn’t like she did anything special. She’d been called out to make a late-night run to the Jordanian border to pick up some journalists and their military escort. About halfway between the international checkpoint and _As Sweimreh_ their convoy had been attacked on both sides of the road by insurgents waiting in the in ditches. Her vehicle wasn’t equipped for combat. It had bullet-proof windows and exterior panels, but the gun mounts were on the front and rear humvees, and she had civilians on board. She panicked and drove off, leaving behind the rest of her convoy in favor of saving her own life and the lives of the people in her humvee. She can still see the blood that painted her windshield after she’d run down one of the roadside shooters, and how it streaked when she tried to clear it with her wipers. She’d gotten back to base to reports of three wounded, but no one dead. The humvees had even taken two prisoners, who would be held and questioned before being transported to a prison facility in Jordan. By getting her unmanned vehicle out of the way, the rest of the convoy had been able to blockade the road and trap the insurgents. They’d given her a commendation and a promotion, but it felt like a coward’s reward. She’d fled the attack. How does that earn medals?

“I didn’t ask for it,” she says, stubbing out her own cigarette in the sand and casting a quick glance around the camp, glowing bright red and orange in the heat of the desert sunset. She checks her watch and sighs. “We have patrol in an hour. I’m gonna catch a quick nap before hand. Wake me forty, okay?”

“Whatever you say, Specialist.” Bobby lights another cigarette and slips back into the rec tent, for what she assumes is another hand of poker before they share a long night’s watch around the perimeter of the base.

She gets back to the barracks--crudely constructed wooden buildings in a barren plot of land on the edge of the small town--and kicked off her boots before crawling into her cot. She doesn’t really have any intention of sleeping, but it’s better that Bobby think she’s taking a nap than find out what she’s actually doing. She pulls a notebook and pen from the small foot trunk beneath her cot, and begins to write, her back pressed against the wall and her legs stretched out in front of her.

_Dear Quinn..._

//

There’s another letter in the mailbox when she gets home from work, covered in enough postage to tell her that it’s traveled a very long way to reach her. The envelope is dirty and torn at the edges, but unopened, as far as she can tell. Which means that Brittany hasn’t been home to see it first, and she has the pleasure of reading her own mail for once. She snatches it and darts up the narrow, creaking stairs and pushes her door open in a flurry. She takes it immediately into her room, clicking the lock behind her, just in case her live-in couch-surfer gets home from the studio early. She’ll want to read this as well, even though the letters are always addressed to Quinn.

She pulls the previous four from the drawer in her bedside table and stacks them chronologically. It’s a ritual she’s started, to prepare herself for whatever is in the newest letter. She takes a few minutes to reread each of them before opening the new one, just so she can be mentally balanced enough to handle the contents inside.

 _I killed a man today_ , the first one had said. It had arrived three months before, in September, when the leaves were just beginning to turn as autumn in New York settled over the city. _At least I think I killed him. I ran him over with a humvee, got blood all over the windshield. I drive a humvee here. I’m a driver. I’m a chauffeur, Quinn. A fucking chauffeur. This is my big epiphany, my life’s purpose. To cart people around the fucking desert dressed in body armor and running people over. Maybe you and Brittany were right._

It was dated at the top. August, over a month before she actually received it, and some of the sentences of Santana’s curling penmanship had been covered in thick black lines, redacted by a military that still feared mail being intercepted by the enemy. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know what was blacked out. The stuff that wasn’t was terrifying enough. The first letter rambled for a page about the way the man had died, and how Santana had been forced clean his blood from the windshield herself once she’d gotten back to base. About how they’d been attacked and she panicked. How she was always scared and that Bobby was trying really hard to make her laugh but it didn’t work a lot of the time.

 _I was thinking about that the other day_ , she wrote. _About how you and I didn’t laugh a lot while we were together. Is that okay? To miss someone so much who rarely made you laugh? If get out of this place, I promise I’ll make you laugh more. You deserve that._

Brittany had gotten to the letter before she’d arrived home from work. The envelope had been carefully cut across the opening, so as not to damage the precious words inside. But the letter, once she had it in her hands, had been crumpled and cried on and nearly torn in two in the rage Brittany had been forced to endure while reading it alone. She had it in her lap when Quinn walked in, still wrinkled from the anger but Brittany had done her best to smooth it.

“This is yours,” she’d said, and avoided eye contact as she left the apartment, probably to get some air, and some space away from Quinn. “It’s from Santana.”

Two more letters arrived a week later, written almost consecutively in the days after the first one was sent, dated at the tops and written more elegantly, with less desperation and fear. The second is an apology for the first, taking back all the things she’d said.

_I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. It’s not fair. I’m sorry. It’s not so bad out here. Three squares and I’ve got a killer tan. Granted, it’s a farmer’s tan and the body armor makes it really hard to rock a bikini, but the parts of me that ARE tan are like... REALLY tan._

She tries to joke and brush it off, but there’s tension in Santana’s handwriting. Her letters are bunched together, messy and tight and not at all characteristic of Santana’s usually flowing cursive. She prided herself on it. She could barely spell when they were kids. She had trouble with phonetics, thinking that whole “sound it out” thing actually meant she was spelling shit right. So even though she usually failed her spelling tests, she made damn sure she did it with style. This, though, was not the Santana she’d grown accustomed to. She made small talk in a letter, mentioning her two friends from Fort Dix and how she’d been promoted before ending the letter abruptly.

The third letter was a withdrawal of the apology in the second, the letters still tight and frustrated. Nothing had been redacted from this one. At least the army took no issue with professions of love.

_No, on second thought, fuck that. I’m not sorry. I should have said it before. I should have made you listen. I should have tied you to a chair until you listened to every goddamn word I had to say because you NEVER FUCKING LISTENED TO ME, QUINN. I should have been stronger and told you all this sooner, but everything was always about you, you, you. And that’s half my fault. I let it happen. But this is my life, too, Quinn. And if I want to tell you that I love you, then I’m damn well gonna say it. And you’ll respect me enough to respond._

Brittany had read that one first, too. It was laid out neatly on the table for her when she’d arrived home from work, with a post-it note stuck to the corner saying she’d gone for a walk, that she’d be back late. Quinn read the letter and understood, giving her the space she needed. It didn’t stop her from taking the letter to bed with her, tucked safely beneath her pillow on the left side, pretending maybe if she went to sleep she’d wake up and Santana would be there to say it herself. And then, she thought, she could finally say it back.

She had no idea what she could put in a letter that would make any difference to Santana. If she couldn’t even say what she felt out loud without Santana there, how she could put it in an envelope and send it thousands of miles? She couldn’t. She couldn’t let Santana experience her saying it the first time through a letter, through a phone call. Nothing but face to face would be acceptable, after everything she’d done.

But after the third letter came, so close to the first two, she knew she had to send _something_. Something to let Santana know that she’d gotten them, that she was waiting for her. That she had a chance. More than a chance, really. So she’d gotten an Empire State postcard from the souvenir shop around the corner from Waters, Young  & Associates and written, “Come back to me.” Nothing else. Not even her name. Just the plea, in her practiced cursive, written with all the emotions she wanted to convey but couldn’t just yet. She hoped it would be enough for Santana. She addressed it to the base in Germany that Santana had been deployed from, which would in turn find her in the field. She put a dozen stamps on it and stuck it in the mailbox, all before Brittany wandered in several hours later, smelling of booze and sweat, but smiling.

“I went to a club,” she’d slurred. “I went dancing. It felt so good, Quinn. It made everything not hurt so much.”

Quinn hugged her tightly, rubbing her back and hoping it was enough of an apology. She couldn’t make Brittany stop hurting, but she could try.

“You’re better than me,” she says, kissing the side of Brittany’s head. “Better for her.”

“Maybe. Probably,” Brittany agrees, yawning sleepily and slipping down to the couch and curling into a ball. “But I’m not who she wants.”

Brittany got a job the week after, teaching contemporary dance to kids in Hell’s Kitchen. Quinn watched her get ready her first morning, like a proud parent sending their child off to school. She’d been so excited that she’d forgotten about the letter, until the next one came, a month and a half after Quinn had sent the postcard.

_Okay, Quinn. Okay. I’m coming home, and I expect you to be there when I do. I love you._

Quinn went out and got another postcard, wrote “Come back to me” on it, and put it in the mail.

It’s nearly December now, and this fifth letter is dated from late October. She runs her fingers over the deep grooves of the handwriting, pressed in so deep on the paper that they feel like Braille.

 _I miss you_ , Santana writes. _I miss the way you’d smoke when I was asleep and thought I didn’t notice. I miss how you tuck your hair behind your ears. I miss you yelling at me to take the garbage out because I forgot AGAIN. I miss our apartment and our bed and most of all I miss being in with you and just laying there. It’s so quiet here at night, Quinn. There’s no sound for miles, and that scares me because I can’t die in silence, I can’t die without the sound of your voice in my ear. I can’t die here, Quinn. And I’m scared that I will. I can’t die without seeing you again, even just one more time._

Quinn presses her lips to Santana’s signature, and pulls a blank postcard from her nightstand. She finds a pen, and writes so cleanly across the back.

_Come back to me._

She walks down two flights of stairs to the mailbox and presses another kiss to the postcard before sending it on its way, to say all the things she can’t.

//

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Williams says, taking a puff of his cigar. The embers glow brilliant in the pitch dark around them. “It’s too fuckin’ hot for it to  be Christmas. It ain’t right.”

“Nothing about this is right,” Bobby says, ducked down in the ditch beside his friend, his rifle cocked at his shoulder.

“Both of you, shut the fuck up.”

Santana is on her stomach in the sand, watching through the scope on her gun as a small camp of insurgents four hundred yards off the road move their stolen cargo from military-grade trucks into a thick-walled bunker built deep into the ground. They’re eighty miles east of _As Sweimreh_ , on a reconnaissance mission. That’s it. No gunfire, no engaging the enemy, nothing. Get in, get out. So why are her hands shaking?

“And put that fucking cigar out. They’re going to fucking see us.”

“Will not,” Williams hisses, but stubs it out begrudgingly anyway. “Can’t see shit in this darkness. Bet you can’t even see you hand in front of your face, let alone a puny cigar from two hundred yards away.”

Bobby shoves the heel of his boot into Williams’ shin, which shuts him up quick enough. The three of them lay side by side on the ground, their armored humvee another two hundred yards away, back on the road behind them. On the other side of Williams, Corporal Digger picks his nose and stares straight ahead, doing what he was told to do, and nothing more.

All around the insurgent camp are rocky hills made of rough sandstone, creating a natural fortress against enemies. It also creates incredible acoustics, and Santana can hear them talking clearly enough as they unload what looks like wooden crates. They’re covered in Arabic script, and she regrets never trying to learn the language. They all carry semi-automatics or Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. Three guards are posted on the opening into the valley, far enough apart that they’d have to shout to be heard. They don’t see them, hunched down so low to the ground and so far away.

“I make a dozen in the compound, another three guarding the perimeter,” the corporal says, a little too loud for comfort, and Williams claps a hand over his mouth.

“If they hear us I will shoot you in the knee and leave you for them,” he hisses, watching the guards instead of the corporal. They don’t move, and he relaxes. “Fuckin’ kids. Who let you hold a gun, huh?”

The corporal sneers, the light of the brightest stars Santana has ever seen glinting off his yellow teeth. “Better a real army man than a Weekend Warrior. Fuckin’ kids? Fuckin’ lazy reservists. They sent me to babysit you. Now let’s move out, babies. We got what we came for.”

Santana wants to stay a little longer, figure out what’s in the crates, but the corporal is already low-crawling up out of the ditch on his belly with his rifle in his hands. Williams grabs at his ankle, trying to get him to come back, but he’s out of reach in a matter of seconds.

Things happen quickly. They’re trained, on these kinds of missions where they have little cover or protection, to stay low until they reach high ground or a safety point. They’re supposed to make themselves as small a target as possible. But Digger gets to his feet once he’s out of the ditch, making himself a tall, lanky target with his pale-white skin reflecting the light from those stars. Williams grabs as him again, hissing, “Get down you fuckin’ moron!” but it’s too late. Santana watches through her scope as the shout goes up among the guards. They see movement, they point fingers, and suddenly they’re running, and Santana is running, pulling Bobby by the arm behind.

“Move, move, move! Back to the humvee!”

Her heart races, blood pounding in her ears and she hears nothing but the rush of it. Not her boots pounding through the sand, or the shouts of the insurgents as they chase them, or the bullets that whiz past her. She prays they don’t have storm lights, and just runs.

The truck is a hundred yards off, and she has the keys. She’s fumbling for them, deep in the interior pocket of her flak jacket, the safest place for them. She feels them scrape against her chest, next to the note cards in their plastic bag and the postcards from Quinn. Her fingers wrap tight around them as the moon overhead lights their way, just fifty yards to go.

She chokes on the dust from Digger running in front of her, wishing so many evil things on him for getting them noticed. She swears that if they make it back to base she’s going to have him court martialed, right after she beats the living shit out of him. His long legs carry him fast and far, about twenty yards ahead. She watches his back, following him, until suddenly his back isn’t there anymore and she’s flying past his limp body. She finds herself admiring the beauty of the blood spray that erupts as she passes, from the wound in his neck where the bullet tore through his spine and exited out his throat.

She’s whirling and falling to her knees just ten yards from the truck. Her rifle comes up to her shoulder and she fires off a dozen rounds before she even aims at anything. A shadowy body rushing at her falls, the same blood spray that had erupted from Digger creating a red rain in the moonlight. Bobby is screaming her name, but she’s firing blindly, the keys digging into the palm of her hand as the rifle kicks back into her clavicle. Another body falls, and she sees Williams fall in at her side, firing off as many rounds as he can before Bobby is on her, yanking her to her feet.

“Get the fucking truck started, Lopez!”

“But Digger--”

“He’s dead! Move!”

She’s at the door in seconds, yanking it open and fumbling with her shaking hands trying to get the key into the ignition. Bobby has pulled Digger’s lanky body into the back and Williams is backing up slowly, still firing off round after round at the last approaching guard. The compound behind them is lit up with panic, and cargo trucks have begun to move, making way for the little jeeps with machine guns mounted on the back. They all see it, see how quickly it’s moving toward them. Williams finally takes out the guard as he tries to get in close for a better shot and she guns it away while he’s still half in the truck.

The road is still far enough off that the sand is thick beneath their wheels, making progress slow. Her fingers dig deep into the steering wheel and her eyes sting against the sweat that’s falling from her forehead, beneath her helmet. A hundred yards feels like a hundred miles, with the machine gun jeep crawling up behind them. There’s a heavy, quick _pop pop pop_ and their rear window cracks in spiderwebs from the gunfire.

Fifty yards. They just need to get to the road.

More popping, but each round misses the truck. Williams is hanging out the window and returning fire with his rifle, aiming at the headlights of their pursuers. Santana is just aiming to get them to safety. Another _pop pop pop_ and the window breaks and falls away. She ducks instinctively and the car swerves. Williams lets out a very unmanly shriek, and she hears Bobby begin to pray in the back seat.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name...”

Twenty yards.

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven...”

_pop pop pop_

Ten yards.

“Give us this day our daily bread...”

The tires hit the hard-packed dirt of the main road and she lets out a whoop of joy. Williams pulls himself back in the truck. Bobby still lies low in the back of the truck, Digger’s head in his lap.

“And forgive us our tresspasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us...”

“They’re pulling off!” he shouts with a laugh over the roar of the engine and tearing of tires against rock. “I think we’re clear! Merry fuckin’ Christma-”

The world lights up and they’re flying. Santana puts her hand over her heart, over the postcards, as the truck explodes beneath them, and the fire licks at her heels. There’s a moment, one brief moment, when she’s suspended in air and the flames billow around her, and she’s facing the sky, and in the stars she can see Quinn’s eyes, Quinn’s command.

Come back to me, she’d written. Come back to me.

And then the sky goes black.

_Now, and at the hour of our death._

_Amen._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a very long time coming, but here it is: my swan song. Started for letscall-l, finished for myself, and written with every ounce of strength that I contain. Thank you for your devotion to my words, and for your patience.
> 
> Please be warned: this chapter contains graphic depictions of violence.

The specialist waits patiently at the makeshift airfield set up a hundred yards beyond the perimeter of the _As Sweimreh_ fence. His hands shake as he clings awkwardly to his rifle. He needs to make that stop, and soon. When the Blackhawks touch down, he won’t be afforded the luxury of nerves. He has a duty to attend to. It’s not right that his charges be greeted by a soldier with shaking hands. He’s thankful, at least, that he’s not the one out there retrieving them.

He’s barely twenty years old, on his first tour and perpetually scared shitless. These hand tremors aren’t new, but there’s less fear in them tonight, and more nerves. He wants to do a good job, please his commander, bring honor to his charges while they’re in his care. That’s what he’s been told to call them: charges. He’s in charge of them, in charge of making sure they’re taken care of, that all their things are accounted for, that they’re sent back to their families in pristine condition.

Well, as pristine as one can be when one is missing several important body parts.

The Blackhawk can be heard a long way off, and its blinking landing lights loom overhead as he takes a few steps back, shielding his eyes from the violent spray of sand that the rotating blades kick up. When the legs land firm, three grunts jump from the body of the chopper and begin their duty. It’s part of what they do. When things take a turn for the worse and search and rescue becomes search and recovery, the grunts go out and come back with whatever’s left. That’s what he’s been told, anyway.

“You from M.A.?” one of them shouts over the heavy drum of the engine. The specialist nods and the grunt returns the gesture. “Never seen you before. Shit luck, a rookie like you getting a job like this. This one ain’t pretty.”

“Are they ever?” the specialist asks, and the grunt shakes his head.

“No. I guess they’re not. Happy fuckin’ New Year.”

The grunts pull the black plastic bags from the chopper and put them on the waiting gurneys. He leads the group back inside the perimeter fence and into the bunker they’d dug out for this express purpose. They can’t do this type of work above ground, where temperatures can get up to a hundred and thirty degrees. The specialist pushes open the aluminum door and a burst of cool air comes rushing out. He urges the grunts and their gurneys down the entrance ramp and quickly through, trying to keep the interior as cold as possible. It’s a delicate balance, and he can’t screw it up on his first job. They leave the gurneys and go in quick, snapping, heel-toe formation. There are other missions, other search and recoveries. These aren’t the only soldiers to have died.

There are four other specialists in the large stone room. They’re all young, like him, except the one in the corner that watches their movements as they bump into one another in their rush to begin. This is an intricate dance, and the old man in the corner has gone through the motions with them, but this is their first solo run. He won’t step in unless there’s a catastrophe. But at this point, the biggest of the catastrophes in their charges’ lives have long since passed.

There’s a procedure they have to follow. This is the army; there’s a procedure for everything. The two specialists over the table remove the clothes, giving all possessions found on the body to the two with the clipboards. While they catalog every item and its condition, down to the serial number on the crumpled five dollar bill in the left breast pocket, the first two specialists begin assessing their charge.

There’s a form they must fill out, with an outline of a body on a blank white  page. They have to begin by noting each birthmark, scar and tattoo. Their size and shape and color, with a description. It’s common for soldiers to get their ID numbers tattooed in various places around their bodies, in case they were killed without their dog tags, and they needed another form of identification.

Then they’ll note each place in which their charge has been wounded. A black X for each bullet or shrapnel entrance wound. A slash for every cut. Sometimes their charges are too badly damaged to recognized, or they come back home missing pieces, and the recovery team couldn’t find that particular piece. If that’s the case, then they shade it black on their form.

The specialist and his colleague lift the first black bag onto a steel table beneath a row of fluorescent lights. The other two gather their paperwork, making sure they have everything they need before they begin. The bag is unzipped and pulled away, and even with a mask over his face, the specialist has to swallow the bile that rises in his throat from the smell.

The body is rancid. It had taken them too long to recover it, nearly two days after the informant had given up its location in the desert. The flesh is red and bloated from being slow-cooked in the Syrian sun. As he attempts to bend the joints in the arms, stiff with rigor, to remove the bloodstained clothing and inspect every angle, the specialist hears them scrape and groan. The only point that isn’t unforgiving is the torso, which pivots loosely enough that he can pull the corpse into a sitting position. His charge is shirtless, but he must inspect every inch to be thorough.

There are no dog tags on the body, and he can understand why, but he’s lucky enough to find an identification number tattooed down the torso. He calls it out, and it’s written down. There are innumberable slashes crisscrossing the back, seeping and infested with maggots. Their charge was whipped again and again, then dumped on his back in the sand.

Make the marks, he tells his colleague. Count them again, to make sure. Then add an X in the bicep, four inches from the elbow. Two more, one in each knee, where bullets shattered the caps to powder, and a fifth in the right calf, which is hardly visible beneath the extensive burns that cover most of that leg. Make a note about the feet, he says. They’re swollen and bruised, and not just from the blood pooling. It’s a common form of torture, the beating of the feet. With cables or pipes or ropes. Whatever’s handy. The specialist suspects a pipe here. He looks up at his superior, sitting grim-faced in the corner. The older man nods his agreement with the specialist’s assessment. Write that down, he says. His colleague does as he’s told, and the specialist lays the body back down and reaches for the hose to begin washing it clean.

“And the head,” he says, breathing through his mouth. “Shade it black.”

//

Quinn stumbles through the snow on the stoop of Rivke’s tiny little building, cursing as she slips up the steps. She yanks her suitcase up behind her, feeling the wheels get stuck in the slush. Her keys jingle in her mittened hand, and the hat on her head begins to slip down over her eyes as she fumbles to find the main door key in the mess of them on her ring.

“Goddamn it,” she hisses, and stops halfway up the steps. She adjusts her hat, finds the key, and hoists the suitcase up and over the drift so she can make it to the top without killing herself. The sweet relief of the warmth inside the foyer greets her wind-burned cheeks, and she stops to bask in it, pulling a small smile.

“You got mail,” Rivke says from her open door, a hand on her fleshy hip. “It don’t fit in box while you were gone. Take it, get it out of my house.”

Quinn is too happy to be home to squabble with her landlady about the snowy stoop, so she takes the pile of mail from Rivke’s hand. “Thank you,” she says, wondering what could possibly have arrived for her in the week that she’d gone back to Ohio for Christmas. “And Happy New Year, Rivke.”

“Happy nothing until I get rent check,” she snaps, and shuts her door with a bang.

 _It’s good to be home,_ Quinn thinks, and schleps her bag up the flight of stairs. She’s still searching for the house key when the door flies open and Brittany sweeps her inside, pulling the suitcase--snow and all--into the living room. As soon as the door is shut and locked, a set of strong arms are around her shoulders, pinning her elbows to her sides.

“It hasn’t been _that_ long, Britt,” she says, patting the small of Brittany’s back until she’s released, and sucks in a deep breath that she’d been kept from taking in Brittany’s hold. “Did you take some kind of Krav Maga class while you were in LA? Jesus, I think you broke my ribs.” She rubs her sides and Britt laughs.

“I just missed you is all,” she says, helping Quinn out of her coat and pulling her down onto the couch. “How was Christmas in Ohio?”

Boring, she says. She fought with her mom (“You have all those loans to pay off, Quinnie, and still no man to take care of you!”) and her dad got drunk when they went out to dinner (“It was bad enough that your sister is a divorcee, but now you’re telling me you’re one of those _queers_?”), so she left before dessert arrived and didn’t return his phone calls. But it’s nothing new in this long, repetitive history of the relationship between Russell Fabray and his daughter.

“What about you?” she asks, smiling and poking Brittany in the side. “Did you see Alex while you were in LA?”

Britt bites her lower lip and stares at her hands. She’s been biting her nails again, and Quinn can see they’re down to nubs.

“Britt?” There’s a pause that sucks the air from the room and Quinn can think of only two ways that the tension will be broken.

“Yeah, I saw him.”

It’s a vague answer, and she knows it. Quinn can hear the hesitation in it, and what sounds a lot like guilt. She cocks her head to one side, scooting closer on the couch.

“And?” she asks, softening her tone so there’s no pressure on Brittany to answer if she doesn’t want to.

There’s a pause, a heavy swallow. Quinn knows what that means.

She had seen it coming, really. It was one of only two options for Brittany once she was back in LA. The other would have been Brittany skulking around LA avoiding him at all cost (despite their agreement that she would talk to him while she was there), only seeing him from across a room or at an industry party. Sleeping with him seemed more likely, though. Brittany had never been one to skulk.

Quinn takes the worry-bitten hands in hers and pulls them into her lap. She doesn’t say anything, just waits.

“We went out to dinner, just to talk,” Brittany says, trying to explain, or convince herself that she’s okay with what happened. “We split a bottle of wine, and it was like nothing had ever happened. Even after six months he just wanted to make sure I was happy and he didn’t try to win me back or anything or pressure me and I remembered what it felt like to have someone who wanted to be with me. I spent so much time pining over Santana that I’d forgotten how good it feels to be the first thing someone thinks about when they wake up. I was tipsy and it just happened, and now I don’t know what to do.”

Quinn lifts a hand and uses her thumb to swipe the tear that had fallen from the corner of Brittany’s eye. She scoots closer on the couch and pulls Brittany into a hug that rivaled the one she’d received when she’d gotten home.

“Do you want to make it work with him?” she asks, and Brittany scooches in tight against her side.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s there, all those things I used to feel. But there’s this... guilt? For being able to forgive him so easily for what he did, for being happy when Santana is gone.”

Quinn nods solemnly, stroking a hand through Brittany’s long, light hair. Her fingers untangle the knots and brush it smooth. She smells like jasmine and vanilla, and it’s a smell that’s become both familiar and comforting. She can’t imagine Brittany leaving, taking that smell with her if she decided to go back to LA, back to Alex. She doesn’t think she could handle all of this on her own.

“He didn’t know, B,” she says, despite herself. “He thought he was taking care of you. He couldn’t have known what he was doing. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy work so hard to prove how sorry he is.” The warmth of the body next to her rubs off the chill of the evening, and she swallows the last of her selfishness. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy. She would want that for you.”

Brittany lets out something that sounds like a laugh-sob and she nods into Quinn’s shoulder. “Isn’t that just the thing, though?” she says. “Maybe I can’t be happy with anyone else. Look how quickly I ran when... look at how quickly I ruined it, when she came between me and Alex.”

She squeezes Brittany tighter to her body, knowing how she feels. That fear that she might never be happy, that she’d given up her one shot at it. She feels it so deep in her bones in her every waking moment, and it lingers on in her dreams. Dreams of Santana alone in the dark and suddenly she’s taken by plumes of fire and all the while it’s silent, and Quinn can do nothing but watch from somewhere high above.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” she says, pressing her lips to the top of Brittany’s head. “You have a guy in LA who basically stopped his life to wait for you to come around.  He loves you. And you love him, don’t you? After all this time apart, you think about him, you miss him.”

“Of course,” Brittany says, surprising only herself at the quickness of her response. “But I might hate myself for settling, if I go back.”

Quinn scoffs and rolls her eyes. “No you wouldn’t. How is going back to LA to be happy with someone you love settling?”

Brittany’s head is tucked beneath Quinn’s arm, her cheek on Quinn’s chest. She takes a deep, thoughtful breath that Quinn can feel, so she knows Brittany is at least considering what she said. She takes a few more of them, audible in the quiet of the small apartment, just thinking. And Quinn doesn’t push further, because this isn’t an instantaneous decision. There are factors to account for, feelings that need to be processed. And Brittany has to do that on her own.

“Say you’re right,” she says, after the silence had grown from moments to minutes. “Say I go back to LA, and I’m happy. What happens to you?”

The hand moving through Brittany’s hair stills at her temple, fingers laced at the scalp. “I stay here. Work, try to find a job. It’s not about me, anyway. You go get your guy. I’ll be okay.” She smiles and kisses the top of Brittany’s head, to reinforce the point.

“I don’t think you will be, though.” Brittany slips out from under Quinn’s arm and sits upright, tucking her legs underneath her. “Maybe I’m not the only one that needs to be convinced I deserve happiness.”

“Britt-”

“No, you let me finish.” Brittany’s eyes narrow and her brows knit together in a stern, maternal sort of way that ought to be accompanied by a wagging finger. But Brittany’s hands stay in her lap, thumbs twiddling. So Quinn demures, slumping like an apologetic child.

“You _do_ deserve happiness, Quinn. And love. I don’t think you know that. Ever knew it, really. Your life has just been one mess after another, ever since we were kids. You needed all this love that you just never got, so you loved yourself and no one else. Not, like, selfishly. You just did what you had to because no one ever loved you like you needed. No one ever taught you what it felt like. So when you finally had it, you didn’t know what to do, and you panicked. It’s totally understandable.”

“I know how to love, Brittany.” Quinn crosses her arms over her chest defensively, pressing her back against the arm of the couch like she’s being backed into a corner. “I’ve loved so many people in my life. Puck, Finn, Sam, Joe...”

Brittany scoffs and Quinn is a little offended. “Did you really loved those guys, or were you telling yourself that because it felt better than admitting that you were using them?” she asks, leaning forward and yanking Quinn’s hands out from her crossed arms to squeeze them tightly. “And did any of them ever really love you?”

Quinn is quiet, staring at a fray in the upholstery of the couch. She pulls one of her hands free to pick at it.

“Other than Beth,” Brittany presses. “Has anyone ever loved you--truly loved you, Quinn, unconditionally--in your entire life?”

They both know the answer, and Brittany isn’t going to force Quinn to say it out loud. It would be salt in the wound. She’s already made Quinn cry, her head hung and face hidden behind a waterfall of hair so the only way she knows Quinn is crying is by the drops of water falling on their entwined hands. Brittany gives her a minute, letting her pick at that thread like a scab.

“It’s just so funny, you know?” she says, pulling Quinn’s hand back into hers when the hole in the fabric begins to widen. “Because Santana had the same problem. No one ever loved her. Even me, for a while. I didn’t choose her first. And even though you both were going through the same thing you had such different reactions. You don’t know how to love other people, but she doesn’t know how to love herself. So you both need some lessons. And I think the only people who can really teach you are each other. You just fit right.”

Brittany pulls Quinn off the arm of the couch, fighting to get her to come out of her corner until Quinn concedes and allows Brittany to hold her. They fit better this way, Brittany’s long arms wrapping fully around Quinn and cradling her. There’s nothing left for either of them to say, so it’s best to just sit like this, stew in it for a while.

She looks around the living room where she’s lived for the last six months. There’s a Japanese folding shade set up in the corner, where a single bed has been set up behind it. The couch is actually a couch again, even though it makes the room even smaller than it already was. Quinn has never complained, and Brittany gets a sudden sense of what it must have been like for Santana after she’d fled LA. Being swaddled in this environment that’s a safety net against everything that’s chasing you. It’s comforting. She can see why Santana came here, why she stayed, and, after spending so much time with Quinn, how she fell in love. She doesn’t like it, but she understands it.

Leaning forward, she picks the stack of mail Quinn had brought in up off the coffee table, she flips through it, sorting Quinn’s letters from hers before handing a stack, including the large white folded envelope, over to Quinn.

It’s a domestic little affair, going through their mail together. Separating bill from junk, because that’s all they ever get these days. Brittany still has a permanent address in LA, but some of that has been forwarded along. She’s done before Quinn, who seems stuck on the contents of that big envelope. Her eyes are wide and flicking left to right as she reads, lips parted as if to speak.

“What is it?” she asks, and Quinn lowers the folded stack of paper.

“Britt,” Quinn says, lifting her gaze to meet Brittany’s as the corners of her mouth curl upward. “I did it. I passed the Bar.”

//

They arrive home nearly seven months after they left, a week after the rest of world had rung in a new year. It’s a silent, solemn affair. Their escorts don’t like the duty, but in war certain traditions must be upheld. They honor the dead, going through the motions of unfolding new flags, ironing them free of their pressed wrinkles and laying them with precision over the temporary metal boxes that have been used to carry a hundred other bodies back to weeping families. These dutiful men greet these families at the front of the hanger, and escort them to their proper caskets. The military chaplains are ever-present, lingering at the edges of the hanger to wait for a polite way to introduce themselves. Most families want this sort of surface level comfort, despite knowing that each chaplain has a monologue prepared. The army gives them a script from which they’re told not to deviate. Most of them are seasoned enough to know what to say to just be vague enough that no one really gets hurt. Or more hurt than they already are.

“Your son gave his life for his country,” he will say. “Your daughter is a hero. We are all called to serve, and they answered the call and served with honor. You should be proud of their sacrifice.”

But the parents of a dead child find it difficult to take pride in death. The wives of dead husbands holding the hands of fatherless children see murder, not sacrifice.

“Private Erickson was a courageous man, ma’am,” the chaplain says on that cold January day, and Georgia clings to Ana in silence. “I spoke to his commanding officer, and he tells me your husband was very brave during his captivity. He died a hero.”

Georgia refuses to cry. Not in front of her daughter, who asks for daddy every day. Not in front of this chaplain, who’s just doing his job, but whom she wants to slap for his assertion. She’d watched the ransom video that the insurgents had sent to the  military. She’d seen her husband on his knees with AK-47s at his temple. He’d had a bag over his head and a painful burn on his leg. He’d soiled himself. He looked the opposite of a hero. And she was sure he’d have said so, too.

 _I shat myself, G,_ he would have said. _What kind of a hero shits himself?_

“If there is anything I or the army can do for you in this devastating time, please don’t hesitate to call me.” He presses a business card into her hand and she nods, but doesn’t intend to call anyone. The army has taken everything from her, but she won’t take a thing from them. She swears on her husband’s makeshift coffin that she won’t let them own her. Not like they had owned Bobby, like they had used him and thrown him away.

There are Mortuary Affairs teams waiting to transfer the plywood coffins within the aluminum cases into the care of a local morticians hired by the families. They take over once the chaplain has walked away, and Georgia waves them on, wanting it done and over with so she can go on planning his funeral in peace.

She’s not quite sure that peace is what she’ll get, but she hopes for it anyway.

“Dada,” Ana mumbles, pointing at the room full of flag-draped boxes. The flag had always been associated with daddy. Georgia is sure that her daughter will have this association for the rest of her life. When she’s twenty-five and walking down the street and sees the Stars and Stripes waving overhead, she’ll stop and pause and feel a pang, even though she’s not sure why. Maybe she’ll mistake it for a sense of patriotism. Only Georgia will remember this day, when they’d come to bring daddy home, only to take a flag back with them instead.

“Dada’s in heaven, baby,” Georgia says, bouncing the toddler on her hip. “Dada’s gone away. But he loves you very much.”

Ana’s lower lip juts and trembles, and Georgia pulls her in tight to her chest. The last thing she needs is a sobbing child’s cries echoing off the walls of the air hanger. There are other people mourning, other wives and other children. Today is a day of sadness for everyone. It isn’t right that their lives be interrupted any more than they already are. The little body struggles against hers for a moment before settling. The girl brings her hand to her mouth and sucks on her fingers self-soothingly. She has nothing else to calm her down.

There are a dozen other caskets, a dozen other families. At the far end of the hanger, she sees Jenny all in black, her body draped across the top of a box, wracked with sobs. She can hear her from here, screaming, “Why, why? God, please, why?” as though God will give her answers. There are no answers for something like this. There are no reasons. Only chaplains standing by, talking about sacrifice.

There are two older women with her. One is clearly her mother, and the other is probably Williams’. Mrs. Williams has a handkerchief pressed to her nose and sunglasses over her eyes, standing stiff and straight. Jenny’s mother rubs her daughter’s back and tries to soothe her. Nothing will calm the girl, and Georgia admires her ability to completely lose control. It’s not something that she has the luxury to do.

The rest of the boxes, she assumes, are filled with other remains. Pieces, like Bobby. 

They had briefed her one what to expect when his body was returned. They’d told her, but she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t comprehend that kind of violence. They had told her that she didn’t want to see it, but it was her prerogative if that’s what she decided. But he wouldn’t be whole. He wouldn’t have an open casket. They’d recommended cremation before they shipped him home, even offered to take care of it for her. But how was she supposed to be satisfied with that? She sent away a man. She wouldn’t be returned an urn full of ash.

It doesn’t matter that he isn’t whole. That he doesn’t have all the characteristics of the husband that had left her on the tarmac seven months before. His clear blue eyes and his big ears and sharp jaw. They’re gone. Unrecoverable. She’d rather have what’s left, even if she doesn’t have the strength to look at it for herself.

The funeral director is shutting the door to the hearse, and the Mortuary Affairs officers are carefully folding Bobby’s flag. The younger of the two, no more than twenty, presents it to her, swallowing hard as she takes it.

"This flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army as a token of appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service."

His heels click and he’s off to fold another flag, recite another line. The army got a soldier. She got a body and a flag.

“San’na,” Ana says around wet fingers. “Mama, San’na.”

Georgia bites her lip. That’s just one more thing she can’t explain to a toddler, and she thinks losing daddy is quite enough for one day. “Santana’s not here, baby. Let’s go home, okay?”

“San’na,” she insists, kicking her feet and screwing up her face in anger. “San’na!”

Counting to ten isn’t going to release the frustration Georgia feels building, but she tries it anyway. She closes her eyes and rocks her daughter quietly, mouthing the numbers while she listens to the idling engine of the hearse just outside the hanger.

She gets to six before she hears an unfamiliar sound that doesn’t mesh with the sobs of the families or the rumbling of engines. A soft _click shuffle click_ that moves closer while her eyes are shut.

“San’na,” Ana says again, and Georgia feels another person standing next to her as the _click shuffle click_ comes to a stop.

“The Kid’s got a good memory,” Santana says, and Georgia opens her eyes.

Her closest friend stands on crutches, her weight leaning on her hands and wrists. The usually crisp green dress uniform is rumpled at her sides, where the cushions have wrinkled the polyester jacket. There’s a Purple Heart dangling from her chest beneath a row of multicolored bars, indicating her service overseas and her commendations. Her beret is askew on top of her hair, slicked neatly into a bun set low on her head. She’s pale, or as pale as she can be. Her face is drawn and thin, with dark circles beneath heavy-lidded eyes. There’s a still-healing scar that runs from her temple down the side of her face and neck, disappearing under the collar of her blouse. Pink, raging welts spiderweb the backs of her hands where the fire burned her, and her fingertips on her left hand are still bandaged. She can only guess why.

None of that hits her as hard as seeing the left leg of Santana’s straight green dress slacks tied off at the knee.

“Sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” she says, with the weakest smile Georgia has ever seen. “You take things like walking for granted until you can’t do them anymore.”

Ana reaches out with both chubby arms and Santana leans down to let the toddler put her wet, sticky hands on her cheeks and squeeze, just to make sure she’s real. Georgia watches, sees how Santana’s remaining leg trembles with effort and steps in to put an arm under hers to ease the burden.

“When did you get back?” she asks, letting Santana lean on her until she’s regained her posture.

“Yesterday,” Santana says, and adjusts her grip on the crutches. “They had me in Germany for a week or so before that, but I don’t really remember most of it. Was pumped full of those fancy drugs they give people after they hack their legs off.” She tries to grin, but it turns into a grimace and Georgia knows she’s still in a lot of pain.

“I’m just...” Georgia bites her lip and looks out at all the coffins they’re surrounded by. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”

Santana snorts bitterly. “That makes one of us.”

//

She has a hard time sleeping. She, who can slip into a coma just about anywhere. Instead, she sits awake long after Quinn has gone to bed, legs outstretched on her little single bed beneath the window, in the corner behind the room divider, with the thin curtain pulled aside. Almost a week since Quinn came home, and she’s still mulling. Her mind just won’t shut down, so she sits and thinks and not-sleeps.

It’s snowing again, but lightly and in a way that suggests a calmness outside. It drifts quietly, like billions of delicate feathers, powdering the tops of the already large mounds along the street. It’s only January and there has already been several snowfalls, which is a change from the last few years for her. She’d missed it, she remembered, when she’d been in Los Angeles. She missed the cold and the snow and all the things that came along with both. Cuddling and hot chocolate and furry hats with poms on top and making angels on your back while staring up at the sky, hoping the real angels would see and smile.

Back in Los Angeles, when she was with Santana, and she thought life was going to be so easy, as long as nothing ever changed. How stupid she had been.

Now she’s got a cot in a corner and a small window in a small apartment, and Quinn. It’s the last place she’d ever have expected to end up, but she can’t honestly say she’s unhappy. She has problems, worries, insecurities, sure. Things that she’s running from and things she’s avoiding. But she’s sitting up on her bed with her arms wrapped around her propped-up knees and she’s staring at snow and smiling up at the angels, hoping that they’ll see. It’s not bad, being here. If she has to be here, if she has to be someplace other than Los Angeles, in her own bed; if she has to be in this limbo of waiting for Santana to come home or not come home... this isn’t a bad place to be.

She’d gone back to LA and found that life had moved along without her. Her landlord had rented out her apartment to a subletter and her manager had found new clients, clients who would take gigs overseas and not flake out and run to New York City without warning or explanation. Her friends had made new friends or gotten engaged or broken up. People got up and went to work, came home at night. Repeated the process again the next day. She’d somehow thought that things would stop, that she’d get back there and it would be like it had been when she’d left. But six months is a long time, especially in a city that moves as fast as LA. She’d hoped that her life would go back to the way it was, before. That this thing with Santana and Quinn wouldn’t pry her out of the bubble she’d created and force her to live outside it. But she’d flown in and got off the plane and she could smell it in the air.

Change has a pungent scent. Like wet leaves under the first heavy rain of autumn, or steam rising off the sidewalk on the hottest day of summer. It’s wet and sticky and thick and when you smell it your nose wrinkles and you look around for a moment, wondering what it could be. Sometimes it’s unpleasant, like exhaust and sweat mixing in close quarters. Other times it’s not so bad, like the steam that wafts from the bathroom after you’ve showered, trailing the sweet scent of flowers behind you in a visible train.

Going back to Los Angeles, the smell had been inextricable. She’d wandered though LAX with it hovering over her, a cloud of unnamed things that were different and unknowable. The cab was just like any other cab, but it felt wrong. Her friend’s apartment, where she stayed, was the same and yet all together different. Things were moved; little things like lamps and ash trays. There had been a photo of Brittany with this friend on the mantle above the fireplace. Now the frame contained someone unfamiliar. And always, the smell followed her.

But then she’d called Alex. She gathered up her nerve and opened a window and called him, and when he pulled her chair out for her at dinner, she smelled his cologne. Not wet and sticky and thick, but musky and reminiscent of every morning in her bathroom, when he spritzed himself with it and she took in a long, heady breath of him. His hand on the small of her back still felt like safety, and his smile felt like comfort.

“I’m glad you called,” he’d said with an easy grace. “How are you? How’s Santana?”

“I don’t want to talk about her,” she’d said, though it left the taste of guilt on her tongue. “All I do is talk about Santana, and Santana-and-Quinn and Santana-at-war. I want to talk about something else. Tell me about the studio.”

So they’d talked about his music, his new artists, a few that had made it to the charts, sold some albums. She told him about the dance classes she taught in New York. He asked about touring, travel, and was disappointed to hear that she hadn’t done any of that since she’d left LA.

“Your life doesn’t stop because she’s overseas, Britt,” he’d said gently, apprehensive. And although she might have been angry with anyone else for that kind of a statement, she couldn’t be angry with him. So she had sighed and said, “I know.”

There’d been a break there, when they sat in silence and sipped their wine and stared at the flickering candles on the table. Neither knew where to go next, so he said the only thing he could.

“I’m sorry.” He’d reached out as if to take her hand, but thought better of it. “For making you miss the phone call. I’m sorry. There are no excuses.”

And now, back here in New York where she’s submerged in nothing but mourning Santana, who isn’t even dead, she sees her reaction to that apology. She’d taken his outstretched hand in hers and brushed it off as nothing, as though there had been nothing to apologize for. Had that been her desperate need for his affection? Or had it been the truth? That he really hadn’t done anything wrong, that it was an accident, that he couldn’t have known. And the morning after, when she woke up in his bed with his arm beneath her head and tiny whispered, “I love you”s on his lips, she’d known that she’d forgiven him, truly.

She finally falls asleep and dreams about hiking in the Hollywood hills, overlooking the city and its constant and choking haze of smog. The smog reaches out and follows her, and she runs from it, trying to scream for help but finding she has no voice. Her feet become heavier and heavier as she climbs until she looks down and realizes that she’s sinking into the ground, and the smog is at her back. She’s choking on dirt and noxious air when a hand grabs her wrist and yanks, pulling her up, into the sky, and she’s flying, gasping. Santana is lifting her into the air, saving her, pulling her from certain death.

“Open your eyes,” Santana says as they float higher and the smog disappears, leaving nothing stars surrounding them. “Open your eyes, and look.”

And she does, but there are no stars to look at. She’s staring at the cracked ceiling of the apartment she can’t even call her own, and there’s a squawking coming from the coffee table, where her phone sits. It vibrates violently against the wood, and she pulls herself from her bed, shivering in the cold. The screen reads “UNKNOWN” where the number ought to be, and for half a second she considers letting it go to voicemail. It could be a creditor, someone trying to track down an unpaid bill. But she remembers what happened the last time a call had been sent to voicemail, and she rethinks it.

“Hello?” shes says, dragging her tongue across the roof of her mouth to clear away the sticky morning voice. On the other end there’s dull static, and then someone familiar, and her stomach drops out.

“Brittany, it’s Maribel. We need to talk.”

//

She waits a week before bringing the letter from the Bar Association into the office. She figures that after the holiday, Mr. Waters and Mr. Young will need a few days to catch up on business before they can give her request its fair hearing. Even then, she’s afraid of pushing her luck too soon, but she has so many things rattling around loose in her life at the moment that she feels like this could be the one stable thing she’s got going for her. And after working here for half a year, she’s got enough clout to ask, at least.

Quinn intercepts Gary Young’s secretary, Marla, before he gets into the office. The aging woman with her glasses on a chain isn’t keen on the idea, because she knows that Young doesn't like meetings to start his day. But Quinn puts on her best, “This is a dire emergency” face and throws in a little pout, just for good measure. Marla caves under the condition that Mr. Young gets an hour in his office before Quinn bothers him, and then pencils her name into the date book on her desk.

"You know that we have a meeting scheduler through our email client, right? You can use that instead of having that old book taking up space on your desk.”

Marla just glares, the glasses sitting low on her nose so Quinn can see her eyes over the top of them. “And if the power goes out? If the computer breaks? Mr. Young still has to know his schedule.”

Marla’s old school, and Quinn kind of loves that about her.

The meeting won’t happen until ten-thirty, so she has some time to kill. She tries to come up with a script in her head of what she wants to say. She can’t go in there and demand a promotion, but she thinks that anything less than that will get her a pat on the head and polite rejection. And she’s made it this far, so she can’t accept anything less than a junior associate position. She’s worked too hard to keep taking one step forward, two steps back. If passing the Bar had been running a marathon, keeping a job as a paralegal afterward would be stopping two feet short of the finish line and calling it good enough. She’s finally gaining some ground, and there’s no way she can allow herself to lose momentum now.

The clock moves so slowly that she feels her plans unraveling. Practiced words disappear and she’s sweating through her blazer. The confidence she had in her sweeping argument dwindles, and she starts to pace in the aisle between her cube and another paralegal’s. The middle-aged woman scowls at her, but keeps her mouth shut while Quinn strips off her jacket and drapes it over the back of her chair and shakes out out her arms. She stretches her neck, rolling her head from left to right. She feels like she’s prepping for a triathlon, not a meeting with her boss.

She watches Mr. Young walk through the hall of the office, laughing jovially with a few of the associates. He pats them on the back like proper colleagues, and heads to his office. It's ten-fifteen, and she doesn't think she can wait any longer. His door is already closed when she gets there. Proper office decorum says that when a door is closed, it means the person inside wants to be left alone. She's beyond caring, and knocks anyway.

“Mr. Young?” she says, pushing the door open without waiting for an answer. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’d like to talk to you, if you have a minute. I'm a little early for our appointment...”

He's never been an unkind man, or impolite in any way, but she's still relieved that he looks up and smiles, waving her in.

"Quinn! Of course. How was your holiday? Good, I hope."

He still reminds her of her father. Or maybe just of what she thinks her father ought to be. "It was, sir. Thank you. Very good, in fact. I heard back from the Bar Association. I passed my exam."

"Fantastic!" he says. His face lights up, and she gets a flutter of excitement in her stomach at his enthusiasm. There's hope. "Quinn, that's really just spectacular. We need to celebrate. I'll have Marla break out the champagne. You should have said something! We could have ordered a cake. Ah, well. Marla has Crumbs on speed dial."

"That's very generous, sir, thank you," she says, the flutters making her meek. "But I'd really like to talk to you about my future with Waters, Young & Associates."

He's already on the intercom, ordering Marla to collect party supplies. "You're not leaving us so soon are you, Quinn?" he asks after Marla grumbles her reply. "We'd be sad to see you go. You're a valuable part of this team."

She gulps. This conversation has taken a turn that she hadn't expected. "No, sir, not at a-"

"Gary, please. You're a lawyer now, Quinn, formalities are behind you."

"Gary," she nods. "No, I don't want to leave the firm. That's why I'm here, actually. I was hoping you might find a place for me on your junior associate's staff. I have a good rapport with everyone in the office, I'm apprised of all your cases, and I've done significant work on many of them. As you said yourself, I'm a valuable member of the team. I'd like a chance to prove my worth in a different capacity."

That was it. That was the speech she'd worried herself into a panic attack over. And now that it's over, and she sees that the smile on Gary's face has fallen, she wonders if she'd said enough, or even said the right thing. He clears his throat and leans back in his chair, his fingers laced and resting on a portly belly. He takes a few seconds, licking his lips and staring at his desk instead of at her, which turns those excited flutters in her gut to venomous snakes that are trying to eat their way out.

"We do value your work here, Quinn," he says at last, sitting forward and putting his elbows on his desk. "No one is denying that you're a talented young woman with a bright future. But when I hired you, I hired you as a paralegal, because that's what the firm needed to get our work done. We have a very limited budget to hire new junior associates each year, and unfortunately, we've already allocated those funds to prospects who were more suited to the positions. We're more than than happy to keep you on in your current capacity. I think we might even be able to provide you with a bit of a raise, given your new accreditation. But I'm afraid it's out of my hands. We can't offer you a junior associate position. Not this year."

There's a numbness that spreads quickly from her chest outward, rendering her speechless and frozen. Prospects more suited to the position means prospects who hadn't failed their Bar exam the first time around. It mean he sees her as a perpetual screw up, despite the work she's done for him for the last eight months. It means the only future she has here is as a glorified secretary, and it makes the snakes in her belly very angry.

"Thank you for your... _candor_ , sir," she says, standing.

"Quinn, I-"

"No, please," she holds up a hand to stop him from trying to explain himself. "I understand completely, sir. It's out of your hands."

She shows herself out and goes back to her desk, plopping there and staring at the waves of color on her computer's screensaver. If there's no future here, what's the point in staying? What's the point, when she knows she's a pity case, taken in like a stray and treated like one, despite constant loyalty and devotion to her job? She’d run the marathon, finished it, and gone to collect her reward only to be told that she was disqualified back at mile three, sorry, too bad for you. Forget gaining ground, forget momentum. She’d done everything that was asked of her, and it wasn’t enough.

When Marla’s voice drawls over the PA system for everyone to come to the conference room, she’s more inclined to keep staring at her computer screen than comply.  But there’s an addendum to the announcement that forces her from her seat.

“That means you, Quinn.”

She rolls her eyes as trudges to the conference room, only to arrive to a round of applause. Mr. Young, his face no longer grim, pops a bottle of champagne and pours a round for everyone. He raises his glass, smiling at everyone but her.

“To our intrepid young soldier,” he says, the bubbles fizzing up the sides of the flute as he sloshes it around. “Who fought a hard battle after being beaten back by difficult times. May she go ever forward in her travels, never back, and find that which makes her whole.”

The group, a dozen junior associates and the secretaries and paralegals, drink deeply of their champagne, taking advantage of the auspicious occasion to get a little tipsy at work. No one notices that Quinn doesn’t drink, but instead stares at her glass. Mr. Young  had called her a soldier, fighting hard battles. But what does she know of battle? Or war? She spent years hiding in a classroom, studying old books and avoiding human contact. She sat in a conference hall and took a test. He told her to go ever forward, but she’d sat in his office and allowed him to tell her she wasn’t good enough, then just walked away.

She suddenly misses Santana so mightily that she shatters the glass in her hand with a tight squeeze of her fist.

The room goes silent as she stands there, staring down at her hand that drips champagne and blood onto the carpet. No one rushes to her aid, and she blinks a few times before looking up, scanning them each in turn. Their expressions range from blank to confusion, but she’s never really felt more clear.

“I quit.”

No one gets in her way as she walks out, shaking off her hand and wrapping a napkin around the gash in her palm. She doesn’t even feel it, really. Her adrenaline is rushing and for the first time today she smiles broadly. There’s nothing at her desk worth keeping. No photos, nothing personal. Maybe that was the reason many of her colleagues had been wary of her. If you don’t plan on staying long, you don’t make your workspace personal. She’d done everything in her power to alienate them, and now that she’s leaving--with a flourish, she might add--they couldn’t care less. And she likes it that way.

The wind slaps her in the face when she leaves the lobby. She pulls out her phone and calls the one person she knows will have her back on this.

“Brittany, oh my god. You’ll never guess what just-”

“Quinn, stop.”

And Quinn does, abruptly and in the middle of the sidewalk on a busy street, which causes a few curses from the people making their way behind her. But the sound of Brittany’s voice has never been so grave. The adrenaline from a moment before has stopped so suddenly that she feels faint. She leans against a mailbox to hold herself upright.

“Is it Santana?”

“Just come home, Quinn. And hurry.”

//

It snows during Bobby’s funeral. The world has gone grey, devoid of color except for the unyielding red, white and blue of the flag draped over his coffin. Even the evergreens are white, buried in a thick blanket of last night’s flurry.

Bobby could have been buried at Arlington, where Jenny is burying Williams, where Digger’s family is laying him to rest. But Georgia couldn’t send him so far away again. She wants him near, so when Ana is old enough and asks about daddy, she has someplace tangible to take her. To say, this is where Daddy went, here, in the ground. She stands beside the coffin she’d bought at Costco, dressed all in black while the falling snow speckles her shoulders and melts away. Ana lays in her arms, sucking on her mittened fingers and staring at the casket as it disappears into the ground. If she understands what’s happening, she makes no sign of it.

There’s a twenty-one gun salute, and a pair of skinny soldiers folding another flag to present to Georgia. The few members of the unit that made it home from Syria are there, and a handful of officers from Fort Dix. The ones who made it home are injured or on leave for the funeral. Bobby had been well-liked, even if Santana had not.

Santana’s back is rigid and she stares straight ahead. Her thumb is tucked tightly against her palm and her arm is angled exactly as her drill sergeant had instructed, with the side of her middle and index fingers lightly touching her eyebrow. Bobby would have laughed at how determined she looks, trying to be perfect. He would have laughed, and she would have shoved him for making her break focus.

She holds both her crutches under her left arm, and for once in her life she’s thankful for being a lefty. She’s not sure that her right arm would have borne the weight. As it is, the limb is trembling and her right leg aches with the strain of balancing on wet, soggy ground.

The left was lost just above her knee. She can still feel it, still feel her phantom toes wiggling, feel the cold on her skin. At night she goes to scratch an itch and finds the bed where her calf used to be. Her mind still believes her foot is there, and demands that it be stretched. She goes to pivot her ankle and, to her frustration, cannot.

What’s left of it, the stump, is healing. It’s only been two weeks since they chopped it off, but the doctors seem pretty insistent that she be up and moving already. There’s a bandage over it, and now her ASUs cover that. It’s against regs,  but she ties the pant leg up so the cold and wind will keep off the bandage. The doctors at the VA keep yelling at her for leaving the hospital, telling her that she’s prone to infection and gangrene, that she needs fluids because she’s not eating. Yes, get up and move around. Don’t get up and move around all the way to New Jersey.

The physical therapist gets annoyed when she misses her twice-daily appointments, but she’s getting around well enough. They’re already telling her that she ought to consider what she wants out of her prosthesis. It’ll be a while before she actually gets it, so she’s pushing it to the back of her mind. She can’t bear the thought of needing someone to teach her to walk again, like a child. Without the joint in her knee, she might not be fully mobile for years, and she has better things to do than spend that much time dwelling on the loss of a limb. Like figuring out what to do with the shambles that are left of her life. The crutches will serve just fine for that purpose. She doesn’t need anybody’s help.

Ana’s nose has gone red in the cold, and when the wind kicks up she starts to howl right along with it. The minister at the foot of the casket says his last words over the girl’s screams, and Georgia bends down to throw a fistful of dirt on top of the coffin. Santana wants to, but her one leg won’t bend and lift the way two would have, so she keeps her finger tips at her eyebrow and blinks rapidly against the biting wind. Georgia barely sees her. A trumpeter is playing Taps as the cemetery director lowers Bobby’s body into the ground, and Santana watches as Georgia’s knees begin to quiver. There’s nothing she can do, her own leg shaking under her own weight, and she nudges the stranger standing next to her. He’s one of the officers from Fort Dix, there out of obligation more than anything, but he does his duty and moves to Georgia’s side. He holds her up while the procession of mourners walks by the deep hole, each throwing a handful of cold, wet earth back from whence it came. She’s sobbing, but hers is silent and more in her body. It contrasts sharply with Ana’s cries, which seem to grow and fill the cemetery with the reminder that life goes on, even when we’re not sure we want it to.

Georgia won’t leave the grave site, even though Ana is shivering and coughing. The reverend brings over a rusty folding chair for her, casting Santana a hesitant look before turning to leave . They’re alone now, the three of them, standing in the falling snow. Santana finally lowers her hand from her brow in a slow, reverent salute, and feels the sweet relief of taking all her weight off one arm. She’s careful on the uneven, slippery ground, and stands guard over Georgia while she rocks back and forth and holds her child close.

The sun sets early in January, and it’s barely past four when it begins to get dark. The cemetery isn’t well lit, but still Georgia sits. Santana doesn’t have the heart to make her stand, or the will to leave her alone. Her gloved hands have gone numb, between the cold and the pressure of her body weight on the handles of the crutches. She’s exhausted; she hasn’t been this long on her feet--foot--since back in Syria. She’s waning, in the wind and cold and snow. So she does something she promised herself she wouldn’t do today. She speaks.

“He was brave,” she says, looking at the hole in the ground, not at Georgia. “When we were being held. He was brave.”

Georgia squeezes Ana tighter, the little girl snuffling herself into silence, having cried herself out. She doesn’t say anything.

“When the humvee hit the IED, I thought I was dead,” Santana presses, filling the expansive quiet with her voice, hoping it will move the widow out of the chair, out of this cemetery, out of the cold. “I saw the sky one last time, felt the fire reaching up around me like some burning hand of God, and I thought that I was dead. But Bobby didn’t believe it, and he dragged my body off the road and into a ditch. A defensible position. He took out five insurgents before he ran out of bullets. When they took us, he--”

A tight, cold grip seizes her wrist and she stops. Georgia can’t look at her, and Santana can’t look at Georgia, so they both stare at their hands, one clasping the other in a way that can only mean, “Don’t.”

So Santana stops. She swallows her story, the words she’d told again and again to commanding officers in debriefings and interviews. The story she’d never wanted to tell again, but knew Georgia deserved to hear. But maybe now isn’t the time. Not at Bobby’s funeral, when Santana’s wounds are healing, but Georgia’s are ripped open over and over, every moment that he’s below the ground and she’s still above it.

“How will you get back?” Georgia stands with great effort and changes the subject. She doesn’t say “home” because she knows as well as Santana that a VA hospital can’t be home.

“One of the officers from Fort Dix offered to drive me,” she says, readjusting her weight on the crutches as she begins the slow march along the cemetery road to the massive wrought iron gates at the entrance. Georgia follows, the smoke of their breaths mingling and disappearing into the sky.

“Will you be there much longer?” It’s small talk now. Maybe Georgia even wants to know the answer, but the tone sounds distracted, asked more out of obligation than curiosity. Santana doesn’t want to force a conversation, or make Georgia care when it obvious she has bigger things to worry about.

“No,” she says. “I’ll go home soon.”

She doesn’t know, and Georgia doesn’t ask, where that home will be.

//

_You’ve reached Santana Lopez of the United States Army Reserve. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible._

Quinn throws her phone against the wall, screaming in equal parts rage and satisfaction as it shatters.

“The only thing that accomplished was temporary stress relief, Quinn.” Brittany sits at the kitchen table, her nose inches away from her laptop screen as she searches through more backlogged news stories in hopes of finding out something--anything--about Santana. “Now you have to clean it up, fix the hole in the wall, and buy yourself a new phone. Which, good luck with that, because you’re unemployed.”

“Thank you, Brittany. Really. I appreciate the reminder. That’s incredibly helpful.”

She sits back on the couch, her head thrown back, and puts a pillow over her face. She’s sick of the bickering, sick of the uncertainty, sick of the waiting. She picked a really bad time to quit her job. At least then she might have had a distraction, but now she just has to sit here and stew in the fact that Santana is missing, and there’s nothing they can do to help.

“We should go back to Fort Dix,” she says through the pillow, and Brittany throws an apple core at her to make her put it down and repeat herself. “We should go back, and see if they can tell us anything.”

Brittany rolls her eyes and scrolls down her screen. “They’d arrest you on sight. They have your photo up at the entrances as a threat to security. They probably put you on some kind of CIA watchlist.  You _honestly_ think they’re going to just let you waltz in and ask questions? _Again_?”

The pillow goes back to its place over her face and she lets out a scream of frustration. The first trip out to Fort Dix hadn’t been _that_ bad, as far as she remembers. Yes, she’d done a bit of yelling and they’d been escorted off the base, but when some guy with no neck and a bunch of stripes on his sleeve told her there was _nothing_ that he could do to help her, she knew he was lying. Of course he knew where Santana was, and of course he could’ve told them. But he didn’t, and made a big show of the fact that she wasn’t family and wasn’t listed as Santana’s emergency contact, so whatever had happened to Specialist Santana Lopez is classified information and cannot be released due Article Something of the What The Fuck Are You Talking About Proclamation.

So she’d starting throwing things. He was a big guy, and it was a little stapler.

“Tell me again what Maribel said.” Quinn puts down the pillow, the back of her head resting on the back of the couch. She turns it, so Brittany and the world exist at a ninety degree angle. Brittany sighs heavily and turns in her chair to face Quinn, exasperation etched into the lines on her forehead.

“We can’t keep doing this.”

“Tell me.”

Another sigh, and Brittany pinches the bridge of her nose. “Quinn, please, can w-”

“I need to hear it,” Quinn snaps, sitting upright. “And you’re the only one who can tell me. Believe me, if there was someone else I could talk to about this, I would. Because you’re really getting on my last fucking nerve, Brittany. How can you just sit there? She’s _missing_ , and you act like you don’t even care!”

“I’ve been staring at this laptop six hours a day, every day for the last three weeks,” Brittany says, slamming the screen shut with a bang that Quinn thinks might have cracked the screen. “In what universe does that mean I don’t care? She’s not missing. She’s just not in Syria anymore. She’s alive, Quinn. I’m worried, but as long as I know that much, I’m not going to start attacking military personnel.”

Quinn’s shoulders slump, resigned. Brittany’s right of course. She’s worked just as hard as Quinn has to find anything they can. Granted, it’s been at that computer while Quinn screams at anyone who’ll listen. Maybe they just have different ways of dealing with their shit.

Brittany slinks over and sits next to her on the couch. Quinn leans her head against that bony shoulder and picks at the fray in the couch. The upholstery has taken a lot of abuse since that phone call came in. But judging by the amount of damage her phone had done to the drywall, it’s probably for the best.

“Tell me?” she begs. “Please? Just one last time.”

Quinn’s entire body moves with the force of Brittany’s sigh, but her friend nods anyway.

“Maribel called me in the morning, on the seventh of January. She said, ‘Brittany, it’s Maribel. We need to talk.’ And then she told me that Santana had been discharged from service and was no longer in Syria. ‘She’s alive,’ she said. ‘She’s out of harm’s way. She wanted you to know that.’ And when I tried to ask her more, she said she was sorry, and that she had to go. She hung up.”

Quinn exhales deeply, letting the air out after holding her breath for so long. “And you tried to call her back?”

“And I tried to call her back,” Brittany repeats, putting her hand on top of Quinn’s and squeezing. “She didn’t pick up. She hasn’t since.”

“Hmm.” Quinn lets Brittany hold her hand, even though all she really wants to do is get up and pace. She’d expected to be spending her time off after quitting looking for a new job, not looking for Santana. She had been, but only because Brittany forced her to with promises of accompanying Quinn on trips to City Hall and every recruiting station in the city. She’d even gotten a couple interviews, but she’s been more concerned with other things than getting hired. Looking at the shattered remains of her phone on the floor, though, makes her rethink her priorities a little bit.

“So what are our options, then?” she asks, watching the door to Santana’s whereabouts closing in front of her.

Brittany shrugs. “Fort Dix is stonewalling. Smitty hasn’t heard a word from her since she told him she was going overseas. Maribel is the only one we know has information, and she’s not returning our calls. We don’t _have_ options, really. We have dead ends.”

Quinn mulls it over, wondering if she could remember the names of any of the other soldiers in Santana’s squad. Erickson and Williams... or was it Williamson? And she doesn’t know their first names, or where they were from, so there’s another dead end. Not the army, not her boss, not her friends, not her mom...

“She won’t return our calls,” Quinn says slowly, rolling the idea around in her mouth before she forms it fully. “But she can’t avoid us if we’re at her front door.”

The hand on hers squeezes tightly and Brittany pulls her in for a hard, sudden hug.

“You always were the smart one,” she says, and Quinn smiles.

//

“Ten more seconds.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Eight seconds.”

“No, I can’t. I’m going to fall.”

“You won’t fall. I order you not to fall. Don’t you dare touch that bar, Specialist. Four seconds.”

“Stop telling me how much time I have left!”

Santana collapses into the bar, and her trembling leg goes out from under her. The trampoline she’d been balancing on catches her before she hits the ground, and she bounces on it, one hand still clinging to the bar that is now above her head. She stares at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror that lines the wall, red faced and sweating. Three weeks she’s been at this. Balance exercises and strength training and coordination and she still falls on her ass every single time. Her right leg feels just as useless as her left. She reaches out, grabs the first thing she can get a hand on, and pitches it with all her strength across the room. Peter’s clipboard lands with a clatter, startling one of the occupational patients and earning a nasty look from his therapist.

“You’re gonna go get that and bring it back,” Peter sighs. “And your little tantrum just earned you three more sessions with the Doc.”

“You have gotta be shitting me,” she says. “I don’t get to be a little frustrated? I don’t get to lose my temper? My fucking leg is missing, Pete. It’s just fucking _gone._ I get to be pissed off.”

Peter shakes his head, and stands up from where he’d been crouching at her side. “Everyone here lost something, Specialist. They’re all dealing with it. You deal with it, too. Like a soldier, not like a petulant child. Now go pick up that clipboard, or I’ll make it six sessions and ten laps around the room.”

Her physical therapist walks away and leaves her sitting on the trampoline, to go and check on the other patient she’d frightened with her outburst. He looks over his broad shoulder at her, and she watches as he speaks carefully and slowly to the man in the wheelchair. She’s very sorry, he tells the man. She’s having a bad day.

The man in the wheelchair’s name is Kyle. He’s nineteen and he has shrapnel in his brain from a suicide bomber in Aleppo. He’ll never be able to feed himself again, or walk or drive a car. He’ll be two years old for the rest of his life. Santana looks away, ashamed of herself.

Peter’s a good guy, she knows that. He’s doing what he can for her, but she’s been fighting him. Feeling sorry for herself. It’s not like she doesn’t know how lucky she is. It’s been drilled into her head every waking moment for the last three weeks. Every time she comes into the workroom and there’s a guy with half a brain or no limbs at all. She’s lucky. She says it again and again, repeating it like counting sheep to try and get herself to sleep at night. Not that it helps.

_I’m lucky. I’m lucky. I’m lucky. I’m fucking lucky._

It’s hard to feel lucky when all you have are nightmares and phantom itches.

After she’d snuck out for Bobby’s funeral, the hospital had put her on lockdown. No visitors, no privileges. It’s a military hospital, they can do that. But just the same she keeps asking if anyone’s tried to see her and all the nurses tell her no one’s been by. She calls her mom a lot, who’s long since back in Ohio because Santana couldn’t stand her hovering.

“I can come back, Santanita,” she says. “I’ll be on a plane in an hour, you just say the word.”

But Santana is well aware of what her life would be like if her mother was here to “assist” in her recovery. She’d hate herself even more than she does right now. But she still likes to call, because a familiar voice is better than none at all. And she asks the same thing every time.

“Have you heard from Quinn? Or Britt?”

“No, Santanita. I called Brittany when you left Germany, like you asked. She never called me back. I’m so sorry, mija.”

She’s torn about that. On the one hand, she’s depressed that her best friend and the girl she thought might really love her haven’t come swooping in to save her from this shithole, or even expressed slight concern over her welfare. That stings a little bit. But it’s tempered with the knowledge that she doesn’t really want to see them anyway. Not like this; falling on her ass, skin and bone, pale and sans a limb. Most mornings she doesn’t even recognize herself. How can she just go back to the way things were before when she’s not the same as she used to be? No, it’s better this way. Better to find out if she can be something close to human again before she tests the limits of their love. That way she won’t disappoint, or be disappointed.

So Santana just kind of goes through the motions, and lets her frustration, anger, and exhaustion build until she gets pissed and Peter has to teach her a lesson about patience. Like this one, right now, where he leaves her on the floor by herself and expects her to get across the room on her own.

She has a little bit of leverage because of the height of the trampoline, which she uses to get a good grip on the bar attached to the wall. The skin on the back of her hands is still tight from the skin grafts they placed to heal her burns, which makes it hard to fully close her fist, but the bar is thick enough that she can get a good grip on it. She’s also got one good leg, and even though it’s still a bit shaky, she braces it on the floor. One hand stays flat on the tile to make up for her missing foot, and she takes a deep breath. One, two...

“Three.” She pushes up with leg and arm, the one on the bar balancing her out, like some freakshow form of Twister. Right hand, bar. Left hand, floor. Left foot... medical waste.

But she’s standing. She’s putting a lot of her weight on her arm against the bar, but she’s up, and all she has to do is make it across the room. Seems easy enough. She looks around for her crutches, only to see Peter waving at her from the corner, where he leans against the wall with his clipboard at his feet and those crutches at his side. She curses him under her breath and vows to either make his life miserable or make sure he knows that she’s the best patient he’s ever going to get.

Hopping is probably the only way this is going to work, but her balance is still so off that she’s about ninety percent sure she’s going to fall and break her other leg in the process. She refuses to crawl, because how fucking humiliating is that? So she needs to find another way, if only to save herself the embarrassment of falling again.

About fifteen feet away, there’s a rolling stool that Peter uses during strength training exercises. You’re meant to sit on it and pull yourself across the room using just your legs. She’s never been able to make it the whole distance, working at half capacity and all,  but it’s what she’s got if she has any shot at proving Peter wrong. She leans on the bar, which gives a little under her weight, and takes one hesitant hop forward. Her knee quivers, but holds, and she pulls herself a little further along the wall.

One more hop. A tremble, a bend, but she’s still upright. And she’s halfway there.

“Yay, Santana!” Kyle claps his hands and shrieks and she nearly falls at the sound. She looks up and realizes that the entire workroom has stopped to watch her, and she flushes brighter than she already was. She’s making a spectacle of herself, and for the first time in her life she hates it.

But she has a clipboard to pick up.

It’s easier to hop if she starts with a bent leg, but it also means more work for the only muscle that holds her upright. So another hop later, she’s sweating, her shirt sticking to her back. The group cheers her on and she really wants to tell them all to just shut the fuck up, but she’s out of breath and not about to waste it on being a bitch to people who are trying to help her out.

She’s close enough that she thinks she might be able to bend and reach for the stool. If her leg can handle just a few seconds of crouching, she could totally have this shit. She could just reach out, wrap her hand around the leg, and pull it to her. She could-

But she’s face down on the floor, blood pooling where her nose impacted with the tile, and she’s done. There are three sets of feet around her head, hauling her up by her arms and sliding the stool under her rear so she can sit. A towel is pressed to her face and she winces.

“Almost had it, killer,” Peter says, and he’s never sounded prouder. “Maybe next time.”

“Dext tibe get your owd damb clipboard,” she mumbles, head tilted back, with the towel over her broken nose, but smiling just the same.

“You know what would make this a lot easier? For next time?”

She stares up at him. “By crutches?” she snarks.

He shakes his head and pats her stump affectionately. “A new leg. Time to get you fitted for a prosthetic, Specialist. You’ve earned it.”

//

The train car shudders so roughly that her teeth rattle in her mouth, and she grinds them together to stop her jaw from falling away from her skull. Brittany is in the seat opposite her, her pillow propped between her head and the window. She’s fast asleep, despite the clattering of the train and the persistent blowing of the conductor’s whistle.

Quinn wishes desperately that she could sleep. That she could work herself into enough exhaustion that she had no choice but to fall unconscious. But her mind is working overtime. Has been, really, since Brittany got that call from Maribel and they’ve been living in the dark about Santana, since she’d gotten an offer from a firm downtown. She has two weeks to accept it or move on, whether she finds Santana or not. The thought of starting her life over while Santana is still missing, though, was too much to bear. So they bought train tickets, and started toward Lima.

But Brittany has a keen ability to fall asleep anywhere, situation be damned. Santana may be missing, but she’ll be damned if Brittany doesn’t get a solid eight hours every single night. And good luck trying to wake her up in the morning. It’s ludicrous.

So she’s a little jealous, watching Brittany sleeping  across from her, with her eyes twitching delicately in a dream. Her face is slack, mouth hanging open just enough that a thin line of drool runs out the corner and catches on the pillow. She smiles, remembering all the sleepovers as children where they’d made fun of Brittany for that same little bit of drool, not really understanding that they did the exact same thing. And she’d never said a word against them, just shrugged and wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Santana would try to look grossed out and tough, but Quinn always noticed the tiny smile she gave Brittany. A smile that was reserved for her, and her alone. A smile that even now she knows she’ll never get from Santana. She can only hope that, if they ever find her, she’ll be able to coax a different kind of smile from Santana. One that she could call her own.

“ _Next stop, Toledo!_ ”

The conductor has been shouting at them all night, announcing the stops as they reach them. It’s a commuter train, the only one they could get on short notice, so they stop in every major city between New York and Chicago. The closest they can get to Lima is Toledo, so this is their stop, and still Brittany slumbers on. Quinn sighs and leans forward, shaking her lightly by the arm.

“Britt, wake up. We’re almost there.” But her friend snuffles softly and curls into a tight ball on the bench, covering her face with her hand.

Santana had always complained about this. How Brittany could sleep through a hurricane, how hard it was to wake her up. Quinn had never had any reason to wake her before, but the train is slowing down outside of Toledo and they’ll need to get off, or they’re going to be on this train until Fort Wayne, and god only knows how much she hates Indiana. It’s almost as bad as Ohio.

“Britt!” she shouts and gives Brittany a hard shove, immediately pulling back in case Brittany is a kicker. She’s not, and blinks rapidly against the light above them, then buries her face in her pillow.

“No,” she mumbles into the fabric. “Too early.”

“It’s four in the morning,” she corrects and yanks the pillow out from Brittany’s grasp. “It’s more late than early. Now just wake up, we’ll be in Toledo soon, and we can’t keep Frannie waiting.”

Her sister is in the parking lot of the Amtrak station with her motor running and her music blasting. She’s got a styrofoam cup of coffee in her hands, and two more in the cup holders waiting for them. Quinn throws the small bags they’d packed in the trunk and climbs in the front, where Frannie smiles sleepily at her and leans over the console for a hug.

“I’ve missed you, baby sister,” Frannie says. “I’m glad you called. After the row with Daddy, I wasn’t sure we’d ever see you again.”

Quinn smirks and takes a long, deep drag from her coffee. Brittany immediately passes out in the back seat.

“I was only too happy to take some of the heat off you after the divorce,” she says, sighing at the familiarity of the yellow lines down the middle of I-75. “And you know how I love it when Daddy turns that very specific shade of purple.”

Frannie smiles and sips her coffee. “I do. And I’m sure he’d be positively eggplant with rage if he knew you were here in search of your lost lesbian lover. Daddy was never fond of Santana to begin with. Her roots, and all. But knowing his baby girl is sleeping with the help? The _female_ help? I’d have loved to have been there when you told him.”

It’s not meant to be cruel. Quinn knows she and Frannie grew up in the same house, with the same set of ideologies and opinions, and that they parted ways on those ideologies a long time ago. But it still aches deep in her belly that Frannie, the one she’d called for help, would think of Santana that way. She grits her teeth and stares out the window, the fog of her breath steaming up the glass against the cold outside.

“Don’t pout, Quinnie,” she says softly, her tone apologetic. “I didn’t mean it like that. But you have to know that that’s what Daddy thinks, right? I mean, you were knocked up in high school, and now you’re in this little affair with a girl. It’s a little confusing for all of us. So please don’t be mad. I’m sorry. I’m just... I don’t understand. But I’d like to.”

Quinn takes another drag of her coffee, letting it burn on her tongue for a few seconds before swallowing. As much as she’d hoped that Frannie would just pick them up without question, she’d expected this. The need for explanation. They hadn’t spoken much since Quinn left for New York. A few times a year when Quinn is home for holidays, when their mother has one of her dramatic episodes and demands her girls be at her bedside. But they’d stopped talking about anything deeply personal. So the Santana thing had been as much a shock to Frannie as anyone else. And Quinn gets that, so she supposes she owes her sister that much. Answers.

“I mean...” she begins slowly, exhaling hard, trying to piece the words together in a way Frannie might understand. “When you married Michael, you loved him, right? Even though it ended badly and you kind of hated each other, you loved him when it started. Would you go back and do it over again, knowing what you know now?”

Frannie frowns and sips her coffee, staring at the lines on the road ahead of her. “Yeah,” she says after a beat. “I loved him. So much. I’d do it again.”

“So I guess you and Michael, even though you went through hell and you hated each other sometimes... you were inevitable. Something that couldn’t be stopped, even if you knew how bad it would turn out.”

Her sister nods and finishes the coffee, before crushing the cup in her hand.

Quinn takes the crushed cup from her sister and wraps her fingers around Frannie’s. “I guess me and Santana are kind of like that. We were kids together, we grew up together, and maybe we didn’t see it back then, but we were just as inevitable as you and Michael. We always seem to find our way back to each other. Sure, we fight like cats sometimes and I know I hated her and she hated me at different points. But even if I knew it was going to turn out bad--and maybe it will, it has before--I’d still try.  Because me and Santana... it makes sense, you know? It makes sense because I think we need each other. I never expected it to be her that I needed, but I needed someone. And there she was. Put in my life right when I needed her the most, and right when she needed me. We were inevitable.”

Frannie doesn’t say anything, just drives in silence until they reach the Lima city limit and the sun begins to rise behind them. Frannie drops them at the only motel in town, knowing Quinn doesn’t want to stay with their mother and can’t stay with their father. Brittany is once again shaken awake, and Quinn ushers her inside out of the cold before she returns to Frannie at the car.

“I get it,” Frannie says after their fingers have started to go numb in the cold. “I remember feeling inevitable, like it was the only thing that made sense, being with him. And I envy you that, now. Because I also remember how we ended, and how that felt inevitable, too. So I get it, baby sister. And I hope you find her, wherever she is. And I hope you don’t find out what the other end of inevitable feels like.”

Frannie kisses her on the side of the head, not waiting for a reply before hopping back into her car and leaving Quinn there in the parking lot. Quinn thinks that maybe she still doesn’t really “get” it, but she did the best she could. She tried, and that’s really all she can ask for.

Brittany is sitting up on the edge of the motel bed when Quinn goes inside. She’s listing, still trying to wake herself fully, but she’s upright and conscious, so that’s a positive sign.

“Maribel is always up by six,” she says, muffled through her hand and a yawn. “Leftover habit from carting us to morning Cheerios practices. We could go now, or wait. Up to you.”

“You’re going to be impossible to wake up if you go back to sleep, aren’t you?” Quinn asks, and Brittany shrugs and nods.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Now it is, then.”

The Lopez house is exactly as Quinn remembers it. Large and imposing on a block of ramshackle ranches, it towers over the rest of the neighborhood. Dr. Lopez had bought the property when he’d first started medical school, as a promise to Maribel that they wouldn’t always be poor. They built a mansion on it when Santana was still a baby, and watched over the next ten years as the neighborhood fell to ruins around them. Lima Heights Adjacent, once a prosperous part of Lima Proper, went from wealthy families to broken homes. But Dr. Lopez was stubborn and refused to leave. Santana said he wanted to teach his family a lesson in humility. All it taught her, she’d said, was how to drink and fight in two hundred dollar pumps.

The garden walkway is still well maintained, even with Santana and her brothers gone. The hedges are neatly trimmed and the pavement cleared from the few inches of snow that are on the ground. The sun glints off it and blinds her, and Quinn puts a hand up to shield her eyes as they walk up the path to the porch. When she lowers it, the big red front door with its imposing lion-head knocker has been opened, and Maribel stands there, arms crossed over her chest.

“I knew you’d show up here eventually,” she says, lips pursed and hair perfectly in place. “I assumed it would be at a reasonable hour, though.”

Quinn smirks bitterly. “It’s nice to see you too, Maribel.”

Santana’s mother had been no more fond of Quinn that her own father had been of Santana. Something about her privilege and pride being more important than her friends, as Santana had put it. Quinn is sure that their many tiffs over their high school years didn’t help matters. So she’s not surprised by the icy welcome she receives. What is unexpected, though, is that Maribel’s expression doesn’t change when Brittany appears from behind her.

“Is she here?” she asks from Quinn’s side, a tremor in her voice. “Santana. Is she here?”

Maribel sniffs and flicks her eyes between the two of them. “No, she’s not here.”

“Could we talk, then? Please?” Brittany shuffles her feet contritely.

The corner of Maribel’s mouth twitches, and Quinn thinks she might be letting Brittany get to her. They’d been so close once, with Maribel considering Brittany a second daughter. But the twitch is almost immediately controlled, and her mouth remains firm as she steps aside to let the two into the foyer. They take off their shoes, as they’d been instructed to do since they were twelve, and follow Maribel into the living room. She, the eternal hostess, doesn’t offer them coffee.

“You want to talk about Santana,” she says, sitting down across from them with a table in between, like a barrier. “Let’s talk about Santana.”

She seems prepared for them, already hostile with her jaw set and her arms crossed. Brittany gulps audibly next to Quinn and sits up straighter. Quinn can tell she’s not used to seeing this side of the woman she’d once called Mama Maribel.

“We just want to know where she is,” she says. “We’re worried, and we want to see her so we can know that she’s okay.”

“I’ve already told you that she’s fine.” Maribel sizes both of them up, and Quinn thinks maybe they should have waited a few hours and gotten some rest before taking on a mother lion. “That’s all you need to know.”

“But that’s not good enough,” Quinn says too quickly, and Maribel bristles.

“Good enough? Who are you to tell me what’s good enough? And in my own home. You have a lot of nerve, Quinn. I’ll tell you what I think you need to hear, and nothing more. Right now, my decision is that you only need to hear that she’s alive, and safe, and doing perfectly fine without you.”

“ _Your_ decision?” Brittany inches forward in her seat, back still straight. “Was it your decision not to tell us where Santana is? Or is that hers? She’s an adult, Maribel, she can make her own decisions.”

“Don’t you lecture me about my daughter’s decisions.” Maribel’s voice goes low, hissing her words through her teeth. “You, who broke her heart for the one decision she ever made for herself. Selfish, selfish girl. She loved you. _Worshipped_ you. Left her family behind and went across the country for _you_ , and you ruined her. Made her run even farther away from us, put her in danger because you couldn’t keep her happy. Don’t you dare lecture me, Brittany. Have more respect than that.”

Brittany is crying, her face in her hands and her body bent double. She’s had this argument with herself before, and with Quinn. But hearing it from this woman, whom she’d called mother, is a blow she was unprepared for. Quinn puts a hand on her back and tries to soothe her as she just whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“I understand that you’re trying to protect her, Maribel,” Quinn says, trying to balance staying calm for Brittany and not lunging at Maribel across the table for making her cry. “But we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t care about Santana just as much as you do.”

Maribel snorts and leans forward in her chair, eyes narrowed.

“And you, Quinn,” she says, menace and anger bubbling beneath her cool exterior. “Santana came to you when she needed a friend the most and you took advantage of her vulnerability, made her feel whole, then broke her all over again. You sent her off to a war already wounded. Tell me, is that how much you care for my daughter? Because I’d rather see her alone than being ‘cared for’ like that. I don’t trust you. You’ve broken her heart, but you’ve also broken my trust. And once that’s broken, I am not a very flexible woman when it comes to fixing it.”

Quinn evens out her breathing by counting to three with each inhale and exhale. _In, two, three. Out, two, three. In, two, three. Out, two, three._ Never taking her eyes off Maribel.

“You’ve been waiting a long time to get that off your chest, haven’t you?” she asks, as evenly as her counted breaths will allow. “Are you finished now? Are we all through with being angry at one another? Because frankly, Maribel, I don’t give a shit  if you don’t think we’re capable of caring for Santana up to your standards, or if you’ll hate me for the rest of my life. It’s not your call, in the end. It’s Santana’s. And you don’t get to come between her and the people who care about her, no matter how much you think you’re protecting her.”

Maribel allows a small smile of satisfaction to curl across her lips, and she relaxes back into her finely upholstered chair.

“Ah, but that’s just the thing, isn’t it?” she says, standing so she can tower over them. “I _can_ come between you, because I won’t be telling you where she is. And if you’re here, I can only assume you’ve exhausted all your other options.”

Quinn doesn’t answer, but never breaks Maribel’s penetrating gaze, standing her ground.

“I thought as much. Which means you’re out of luck, Quinn. And maybe, as you see yourselves out, you’ll consider this: If Santana had wanted to see you, wouldn’t she have reached out to you by now?”

When Maribel sweeps from the room, Quinn can almost see a trail of destruction left behind. They’ve hit a wall, crashing into it head first at full speed. Brittany is still crying next to her, and she’s still trying to regain the feeling in her face from what felt like ten minutes of being slapped again and again. But they’re no longer welcome in Maribel’s home, and Quinn can only assume that it will be mere minutes before she calls the police if they haven’t left on their own. So she pulls Brittany to her feet and drags her unceremoniously out the door, slamming it behind them.

“She was right,” Brittany says as they walk down the immaculate walkway, her voice barely audible above the cold wind that’s picked up. “We don’t deserve her. We’re not good enough. We ruined her.” Her tears are falling and freezing to her cheeks, and Quinn has to stop them both at the curb and pull Brittany’s face into her gloved hands.

“Don’t,” she commands. “Don’t do this. We’ve been over this, Brittany. A hundred times and a hundred ways, and yes, we fucked up, but only Santana can say we’re unforgivable. And until she does, we keep trying. We care about her. Fuck Maribel. We’ll find Santana, and we’ll get her back. Now come on, it’s freezing out here.”

Quinn wraps her arm through Brittany’s and ushers her down the slippery street. It’s a mile back to the motel, and even though she knows they could take a cab, she thinks it’ll be better for both of them if they walk.

“What if Maribel was right, though?” Brittany asks, a few blocks from the Lopez house. “About Santana not wanting to see us. She could have called by now, right? If Maribel was telling the truth and she’s safe and okay, she’d have called us if she wanted to see us.”

Quinn doesn’t want to think about it. She thought they were headed toward a good place, after the letters and her postcards. But maybe it just wasn’t enough, in the end. Maybe not saying the thing she wanted to say was what kept Santana from them. It feels hopeless, this not knowing.

The motel is warm and clean and there isn’t much else they can ask for. There’s a double bed, so they curl up with Brittany spooning Quinn from behind in a way that makes neither of them uncomfortable. Quinn, who had earlier longed for exhaustion, feels beaten down by it now. Her whole body aches with Maribel’s words and with Brittany’s tears and her own longing to tell Santana the thing she feels so deeply that it’s taken over every organ in her body, not just her heart. And she knows with confidence that if she doesn’t find Santana soon, those organs will fail under the pressure of that thing she feels, and she’ll never recover.

She aches, so she closes her eyes, and lets the exhaustion win.

It’s night when she’s awakened by the persistent vibration of her phone against the bedside table. Quinn fumbles with it, blinded by the brightness of the screen. Her hands are less than nimble with sleep but she answers groggily, her eyes closed against the offensive light.

“Frannie? S’that you?”

“No, I’m sorry,” comes an unfamiliar voice on the other end, shaky with nerves. “I don’t mean to bother you, but my name is Georgia Erickson. I’m a friend of Santana’s. Do you have a minute?”

She’s awake now.

//

The socket pinches at her inner thigh when she puts her weight down on it, taking slow and calculated steps. The compression sock that protects her stump is slipping, and the plastic of the preparatory prosthesis rubs fiercely against the still-swollen flesh there. She could just take it off, but she’s being stubborn. She only uses the crutches wedged under her arms for balance, because she’s still new at this... _walking_ thing. It’s frustratingly tedious, because her brain knows how it works, how to put one foot in front of the other and power forward. But the polycarbonate fiber leg with the magnetic knee cap that pivots on a limited axis with a fixed spring doesn’t communicate with her brain very well, so her brain is shouting orders and the leg does what it wants. She’s ended up on her ass more than a few times but, with the crutches, she thinks she can make it through the park without falling. As long as she avoids the ice.

It’s not as cold today as it had been earlier in the week, and she’s thankful for that as she makes deliberately easy progress from the gate of the park to the grassy field about a quarter mile in. Her hands need to be steady on the grips of the crutches, not frozen and numb. She kicks her left leg out, using what little she has left of her damaged muscle to thrust the prosthetic out, heel to the ground, and dig in. Once she feels it find traction on the concrete, she applies pressure and the joint at the knee bends, pulling her one step forward, then straightens as it falls behind. Her right leg is less of a chore to move, but she’s sore and tired from using all her energy on the other half-limb. Her hips are splayed at awkward angles because of the contraption that’s strapped to her stump and around her waist, making this long walk--the longest she’s taken on the new leg--a weary one. But she has some place to be, and she’s already late.

She’s sweating by the time she rounds the bend in the path and sees a streak of pink hurtling toward her. The Kid that had once had so much trouble taking a few steps is now running as fast as her tiny legs can carry her, arms outstretched and a shriek announcing her intentions. Santana prepares for a blow that will probably knock her over, grinding her teeth and bracing, but the shriek is cut off just before it reaches its target, and she lets one eye sneak open.

“I could have met you at the VA,” Georgia says, fighting against a squirming Kid in a bright pink snowsuit. “You shouldn’t be out here. That’s not a coat, and those are not snow boots. And I’m pretty sure you were banned from leaving after your last breakout.”

Santana looks down at her outfit. Her combat jacket hangs loosely around her thin shoulders, over a black PT sweatshirt. Her fatigues don’t really fit her right anymore, since she’s lost so much weight and her fake leg doesn’t fill them out the same, but the canvas belt around her waist holds them up just fine. Her combat boots were the only ones she trusted to keep her upright on the ice, so she shrugs off Georgia’s assertion and takes a step around her, moving toward a bench just down the path.

“You don’t want to go to the VA,” she says, lowering herself slowly, like Peter had shown her, still not truly trusting the joint in the knee. “It’s too...”

“What?” Georgia asks, incredulous. “Depressing? Because it couldn’t be any more depressing than sleeping with an empty space in the bed next to me every night.”

She lets Ana down, and The Kid scrambles up into Santana’s lap, babbling a string of what might have been words if her little mouth could calm down enough to form them properly. Santana puts her crutches aside and hugs her tightly, as she hadn’t  been able to do since getting back from Syria. She feels tiny arms wrap around her neck and squeeze, and it takes her breath away.

“San’na, home. Home, home.”

Her pink snow boots are covered in slush and digging sharply into Santana’s thighs, sending a shock of pain through her body that she doesn’t expect. Georgia sees it, despite her attempt to hide it, and she pulls The Kid off her lap and sends her running off into the snowy field.

“She just keeps getting bigger,” Santana says with a wince, palming her thigh and trying to rub away the throb. “Unfortunately.”

“They don’t tend to stay cute and tiny for long.” Georgia watches her daughter digging through the snow, pulling out mittenfuls and tossing them limply or simply shoving them directly in her mouth. “She keeps asking for Daddy. And you. Her best buddies. Forget me, I’m just the one that birthed her.”

Santana watches them both. The steam of the even breaths that flare from Georgia’s nostrils, with dark, flitting eyes that betray her thoughts. Ana’s sturdy legs that carry her across the thickly crusted snow with a shriek and a flail. She’s a little disappointed about that, if she’s honest. That The Kid can run so easily now. She was hoping to have a kindred spirit in a wavering, unsteady toddler. Someone to learn with.

“I need to tell you about it,” Santana says after a while, when Ana has fallen on her back and is swishing her arms and legs wide to make a tiny angel in the snow. “If you’ll let me.”

Georgia purses her lips, grinding her teeth. She hadn’t wanted this. She’d gotten enough of the details from the military during her debriefing, from Bobby’s CO when he’d come in for the funeral. She’d heard enough to last a lifetime. And at Santana’s insistence, knowing what she wanted to say, she’d met her here anyway. To relive it all over again. She sighs.

“Do I have a choice?” she asks, and Santana nods.

“Of course. It’s not... I just... My shrink says I’m bottling shit up. If I won’t talk to her, I need to find someone I can talk to. Even if they just listen. And you’re it, G. You’re all I’ve got. And I think maybe you don’t know as much as you think you do.”

“What about Quinn? Or Brittany? Your parents?” She’s searching for an out, Santana hears it in her voice.

“If I wanted my parents involved in this garbage I wouldn’t have sent them home when I got stateside. And the others... I’m not ready for that. They can’t see me like this. I’m half human.”

“They can’t see you,” Georgia presses, “but I can?”

Santana sighs heavily and lifts the collar of her combat jacket up around her neck to shield her from the wind. “You’re different. You’re in this as deep as I am. You know what it feels like. You’re a little half human, too, without Bobby.”

Georgia looks at her then, those cold, dark eyes searching for something. She measures the scar on Santana’s face with a glance, examines her stiff, burned hands and fresh pink fingernails that she’s stopped bandaging up. She traces a visual line over the thin rod of the prosthesis under the leg of Santana’s fatigues. It makes Santana uncomfortable, feeling those eyes probing her, so she shuffles in her seat and looks back at Ana.

“It’s okay,” she says, shoving her hands in her pockets and shivering. “It doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.”

But Georgia’s hand reaches into Santana’s pocket and pulls her left hand out, squeezing leathery fingers tightly in her soft, weary palm. They’re cold, both of them. But the pressure Georgia applies feels like putting her hands up to a fire, and she’s warmed. Welcomed. And suddenly relieved.

“Are you sure?” she asks, and Georgia hesitates just long enough to consider it seriously before nodding.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

//

_She’s being dragged, her heels trailing on the ground behind her. Two sets of rough hands have her by her upper arms, and every bump in the rutted road feels like a knife wound. The corners of her eyes are flickering blurs of color, flashes of movement at her sides even in the darkness. The fire is still burning somewhere in the distance. She thinks she can still feel the heat of it. Her hands are searing, it must be close. Her ears have been stuffed with cotton; everything is muffled and incomprehensible. Someone is yelling in English, but even more shout back in Arabic and she can’t fully understand any of them. She just feels the stabbing pain again and again as they drag her off the road and throw her like a rag doll into the back of a truck. The pain comes again as she lands on her left leg, and her entire body vibrates with it. Her stomach roils and she lurches, vomiting all over the bed of the truck. A rough hand seizes her by the hair and yanks her head back violently. Where did her helmet go?_

_The man attached to the hand in her hair is yelling, but she can’t move, can barely make out his face. He spits on her, she thinks, but she doesn’t feel it, and couldn’t do anything about it if she had. He drops her unceremoniously and she flops, lifeless. More hands are on her, but they’re tender, pulling her onto her back and out of the puddle of her own sick. Bobby is screaming and holding her head in his lap. There’s a man standing over him in the bed of the truck, a rifle in his hand. He’s yelling at Bobby who’s yelling back and all she can think is,_ please please please, just stop, it hurts so much, please, make it stop.

_The rifle comes down on Bobby’s temple and he slumps. Blood from his wound drips as he falls on top of her, painting her forehead crimson. She tries to keep her eyes open, to wake Bobby up, but it hurts so much and she thinks if she just closes her eyes, it’ll stop..._

_When she opens them again there are women standing over her. Women in hijabs with their faces exposed. Women with rifles slung across their backs. They hold her shoulders to the ground as she fights to free herself, but there are three of them, and she’s weak and in pain. Every movement sends her eyes reeling with visions of stars. She thinks she sees Quinn in them. The women aren’t being rough, though, and their soft hands placate her. Even though they don’t speak the same language, she hears them hushing her quietly, like a mother over an injured child. She calms and the pain eases, but doesn’t dissipate. She looks around and finds that’s she’s in a stone room, on a woven mat on the floor. Her left leg is bound in a splint of roughly hewn wood. There are bandages over much of the limb, bloodied and smelling of rot. Her hands, she realizes, are where most of her pain is coming from. They’re bound up in cloth, each finger wrapped neatly and apart from the next, but underneath she feels the burn of exposed nerves. She stills smells of gasoline. It’s in her hair and on her combat jacket, which she’s glad to see is still on her body. She’d been afraid she might have been raped, but maybe that’s what the women are there for. She tries to speak, but the side of her face twinges with each movement of her jaw. There’s a deep gash, from temple to collarbone._

_Her maimed hands reach for her chest, the pocket inside her flak jacket. But the flak jacket is gone, and with it her postcards and the notes she’d made so long ago it feels like another lifetime. Maybe it was. Someone else’s life, someone else’s love. Because she doesn’t feel like the same girl who got drunk, got stupid, and fell in love with the last person she ever expected. She slumps back to the floor and stares up at the women around her._

_“Help me,” she hisses, because she dare not speak above a whisper, and because her throat is full of soot from the fire and dry as the desert she’s trapped in. “Help me, please.”_

_She’s sure they understand, because they shake their heads and pat her shoulder, trying to get her to lay back down. They whisper things to one another in Arabic, talking over her as if she’s not there. She hasn’t been in the country long enough to know what they’re saying, but she picks up a word here and there._

Woman. American. Dead. Three.

_Three of their dead, or three of hers? Where’s Bobby? Where is she? Is anyone coming for her? She’s tired, and dehydrated, and she feels herself reeling again. Her head is spinning._

I’m going to die out here.

_She closes her eyes and listens to the voices of the women as she does something she hasn’t done in many, many years._

_She prays._

_There is no concept of time in the windowless stone room, here with the women who come and go and then never come again, to be replaced by a new woman who is less friendly than the one before._ They don’t want them getting attached to me, _she thinks,_ because they’re going to kill me. _They ladle water into her mouth that tastes of earth and sand, but she swallows it gratefully and takes the little comforts they offer. No men come in for hours, maybe a day, after she wakes.  And how long had she been sleeping? But still they come, and the women scatter like mice against a tom cat. Two of them pull her to her feet and she screams as the wound on her leg--is it broken? burned? She can’t even tell--sets her spine twisting like a captive snake. They blindfold her, drag her through halls and up a set of stairs into a large, airy chamber. Santana thinks there might even be a window. She feels a breeze against the hot, healing wound on her face. They force her to her knees and she screams again and retches. Nearby a body shuffles, and she can hear Bobby fighting to get to her. She hears him calling her name through a muffled gag, kicking out at his captors. She flails as best she can, but she’s useless and lame and even though she screams for him, she can’t get near or fight anyone off. They shove a rag in her mouth and she balks at the stench of it, then kick her in the ribs to make sure she understands she’s beaten._

_Bobby doesn’t seem to understand, though, and she can hear him raging, trying to get to her. Fighting like hell while she rolls over, ready to die. Why don’t they just get it over with already?_

_Even against the blackness of her blindfold, she sees a sudden bright light. Beneath the edge of the cloth over her eyes she sees the legs of a tripod, and then she understands._

They’re ransoming us. They’re making a video.

_They’re shuffled together, on their knees. Santana is bawling beneath her blindfold from the pain of the leg bent beneath her, and she can feel Bobby’s trembling body at her side. She leans into him, shoulder to shoulder, to feel his warmth and let him know she’s there. That she’s alive and they’ll be okay. He presses back, and she almost feels hopeful for a moment. Like they have a chance._

_The light goes out and they’re dragged apart again, and she’s returned to her windowless room full of women. They redress her wounds, but they have no medication or even clean water, so another day in the room and it smells of death and rot and decay. She’s feverish and freezing at the same time, and the women pile blankets on top of her to sweat out the fever. But she knows what infection feels like. She knows she’s going to die, either at the hands of her captors or from her wounds. And sooner rather than later._

_The third day--or maybe the fourth? In her mind things blend so fluidly between awake and asleep that she doesn’t know anymore--the men come again. They bind and gag her, cover her eyes and drag her limp, fightless body into a different room than the one from before. She’s sat in a chair with her burned hands tied behind her back. When they rip the blindfold off, Bobby is there across the room, similarly bound and gagged._

_He fights his ropes viciously, just as he had before. Always fighting, always trying, but she had given up. Between the sickness and her captivity, she was a broken animal. Docile. But not Bobby. He saw her slumped in her chair and he nearly broke his own to cross the room to her. They knocked him out and let his bloodied head loll back, exposing his neck and a four-day beard. That’s how she knows how long it’s been._

_One of his legs has been badly burned, she notices. The leg of his fatigue has been completely burned away, and singed fabric at his hip covers the rest of him. He’s been similarly bandaged, with a dirty rag wrapped around his head from the butt of the rifle on the truck bed, and more around his bicep and calf, likely bullet wounds from the firefight. He’s pale and sweaty, and sickly like he hasn’t been fed. But he still fights for her. And she tries to sit up straighter, so he’ll know when he wakes up that she’s going to try to fight for him, too._

_They’re left alone in the room for barely a moment before a bent old man returns with two mute soldiers, shutting the door behind them. He carries a large carpet bag with him, which he opens and begins to empty on a long wooden table against a wall at Santana’s back. He hums as he works, some Arabic tune she’d often heard the children in_ As Sweimreh _sing when they played. His mute helpers take their places, one behind Santana and the other behind Bobby. The man appears in front of her, and smiles a mostly toothless grin._

_“You will answer questions,” he says in broken English, pulling the rag from her mouth. “Or your friend will suffer.”_

_They hadn’t trained for this. It wasn’t part of some manual they get when joining the army. 101 Ways to Resist Torture. And the satisfied smile on his face tells her that he knows it, too. And it doesn’t matter if they answer his questions. They’re going to suffer anyway._

_The man behind Bobby dumps a bucket of water over his head. He sputters and coughs as he wakes with a jolt. He tries desperately to spit out the gag, but he can’t and is slapped hard for trying. The man walks, hunched, over to Bobby and repeats the warning he’d given to Santana. Bobby’s eyes flash to meet hers, and she immediately shakes her head._

Don’t you do it. Don’t you say anything.

_Not that they know anything worth telling. They’re weekend warrior scum. Rankless pawns in a very large, violent chess game. Worthless, in the long run. Maybe the old man knows that already, too. Maybe he just really likes this job._

_A quick nod from the old man sends Bobby onto his back at the hands of the mute soldier, his arms tied to his sides and his ankles bound to the legs of the chair. He’s lost his boots, she notes, and his feet are black with dirt. The old man hands Bobby’s captor a tool from his table, a steel pipe crusted with rust and thick as her wrist. The old man kneels at her side and whispers in her ear._

_“Tell me the movements of your American soldiers. Where will they go next?”_

_“Fuck you.”_

_It’s almost as though he was hoping for that answer because he titters like a teenage girl and waves a hand at the man with the pipe. With one swift and sure stroke of his bullish arm, he brings the pipe down on the bottom of Bobby’s feet, and they both scream together. Bobby shakes his head, tears erupting at the corners of his eyes, but he stares at her fiercely._

Don’t break. We’ll be okay. Don’t break.

_“Where will the soldiers go next?”_

_Her silence is met with another blow to Bobby’s feet. And another a minute later, and another after that, again and again until they all hear a sickening crunch and not even the gag in his mouth can muffle Bobby’s agony. She’s sobbing, fighting her ropes and willing God to make it stop, if He exists. To show Himself and save them, save Bobby, because he’s got a kid at home. Ana. His girl, Ana._

_Maybe it was hours before they stopped. Maybe minutes. Time doesn’t exist in windowless rooms and torture chambers. But the old man finally takes the pipe back and lays it down on the table._

_“We will try again tomorrow,” he says, and though his voice is disappointed, his smile says otherwise._

_The next day Bobby is chained to the wall and whipped after she refuses to answer each question. Twenty lashes. Thirty. He back is sashimi by the time they’re through, and he’s a whimpering mess that crumples to the floor when they unshackle him. His bare chest, with his ID number tattooed down his torso, heaves as he tries to regain the breath the whip had stolen from him. His dog tags clatter lightly around his neck. He looks at her, and she knows he’s fading._

_“For Ana,” she says to him before they gag her. “For Georgia.”_

_The look in his eyes says,_ “For Quinn.”

_On the sixth day, the old man is impatient, and there are others in the room with him. Higher ups who are unhappy that his playtime is encroaching on their war. So they ask her a question, and when she refuses to answer, they put a bullet in Bobby’s right knee cap. He’s unconscious before she can even let out a scream. And she’s grateful for that, because it means he doesn’t feel the second one when she refuses to answer again._

_The old man gives a barking command in Arabic, and once again Bobby is brought sputtering back to life._

_He’s delirious with pain. The only thing keeping him upright are the two massive hands on his shoulders. He’s sobbing, begging for his mother. There’s a sudden wave of something rank, and she knows that his bowels have failed. The old man just grins._

_“Maybe we do this another way,” he says. Bobby’s gag is removed and the wail the echos off the stone is will-shattering. She’s certain he’s going to give in, and if he doesn’t, she will._

_“F-f-f...” he stammers while the old man peruses his table.  “F-f-f...”_

_“For Ana,” she finishes for him, and he nods._

_“G-g-g...”_

_“And Georgia.”_

_His tongue won’t form the words. He’s trying, his mouth opening and closing, but he’s too weak to make a sound._

_“For Quinn,” she says, and the smile he returns her is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, broken teeth and blood and all._

_But it disappears. A shadow falls over her, and the old man is there, a pair of pliers in his hand. Another barked Arabic command and she’s gagged, then her left hand is undressed and exposed, and he’s yanking the nail from her little finger._

_It doesn’t even hurt at first, because the agony of it is overshadowed by the sight of her burned flesh and the sudden exposure of it to air and dirt and rough, angry hands holding her wrist in place. She’s just kind of watching it happen, like it’s not her hand and not her body. She’s just a spectator. But someone is screaming and she can’t figure out who, because Bobby is calling her name and trying to calm her. But she’s not the one who needs calming._ Talk to whoever it is who’s doing all that screaming, _she thinks._ What is she yelling about? Nothing could be as bad as this guy with his pliers.

_Then she realizes she’s the one screaming. Those fingers are hers and those pliers are pulling out her nails, and she’s the one who’s twisting and writhing so violently that three men are holding her still. She’d lost herself for a moment. It had been peaceful, at least. For that one moment._

I just filed that nail, _she thinks._ Goddamn it.

_The second nail is worse than the first. And she’s hysterical, pleading, begging for it to stop around the gag. She’s weak. She’s weak, she’s not a fighter. She’s not supposed to be here. Just a rich kid from a small town. She’s not a soldier. She’s not a warrior, she’s not strong. Not like Bobby, not like Williams. Oh god, Williams. He’s probably dead._

_She’s trying to make them stop, but nothing she says sounds like words. It’s an incomprehensible jumble of shrieking and gibberish and slobber. She’s half blind from tears and she can’t see Bobby anymore, but she can hear him. He’s still calling her name, still talking to her, even though he’s stuttering. He’s still there._

_The pliers have stopped their work. Her left hand is on fire and there’s blood pooling at her feet, and there’s silence in the room._

_“You still say nothing?” the old man says, holding the bloodied pliers under her nose. “Then you are useless.” He spits on her face and stands. The pliers are thrown angrily across the room, and he shuffles to the door. He stops there and there’s a purposeful, agonizing pause before he gives another command, in English so she understands._

_“Kill him.”_

_Three men have Bobby on his shattered knees in an instant and he’s screaming at her, “C-close your eyes! Santana d-don’t you look, close your goddamn eyes! Tell G-georgia that I-”_

//

She closed her eyes. But the sound of it still echoes across her thoughts, haunts her when she sleeps and when she wakes, follows her. They’d used a machete, long and sharp; more than a match for human anatomy. He’d screamed until they severed his vocal chords, and then it was a grinding sandpaper sound of metal on bone, muffled by the gurgle of blood mixing with air the escaping from his lungs. The thud his head had made when they’d dropped it on the floor made her vomit, and then black out. They’d taken his body, and thrown her back in with the women.

“The marines raided the building the next day, before they could execute me, too,” Santana finishes. “They picked up Williams’ and Digger’s bodies near the truck, where they died, and Bobby’s about five miles from there. You know all the rest.”

Her entire body is numb to the cold, but her cheeks ache as she sniffs and tries to wipe her nose with the back of her sleeve. The tears frozen to her cheeks melt at her touch. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying.

Georgia has been tracing the cuticles on Santana’s hand for a while, her finger going over them one by one like she’d never seen fingernails before. There’s some horrified kind of awe glimmering in her eyes, and although Santana is glad they aren’t so cold as when she’d arrived, she’s also kicking herself for forcing Georgia to live through this with her. She’s not a soldier. She’s a woman, a mother, a widow.

Hell, maybe that made her stronger than Santana ever was.

“They’re still thin,” Santana says, prompting Georgia out of her reverie. “I take a lot of vitamins, so they grow back right. And they ache, sometimes. But my shrink says that’s psychosomatic. Whatever that means.”

Georgia looks up with wonder and terror and Santana sees behind those big dark eyes that things are never going to be the same. She’s made a mistake, and she can’t take it back. She pulls her hand from Georgia’s death-like grasp and starts to cry, the full force of it hitting her in the chest so suddenly that she thinks she might be drowning in it.

She can’t take it back. She can’t unlive it. She can’t go back to how it used to be. She’s said it now. All of it. Someone else knows, and that makes it real. It really happened.

Her leg is gone. Her leg is gone, and Bobby is dead, and she’ll never be the same again.

“I’m sorry,” she says through her scarred hands, pressed to her scarred face to try and hold back the tidal wave. “I promised you I’d take care of him. I’m sorry, _I’m sorry._ ”

Georgia is calm while Santana sobs. She lets her friend cry and wail and go through all the stages of grief that Georgia herself has long since passed. She can’t talk her through it, because what is there to say, after that? She knows now. She knows that maybe when the chaplain said that her husband had been brave, he meant it. She knows just how brave, just how noble and valiant and fierce he’d been. How hard he fought to come back to them. But he hadn’t, and she couldn’t blame Santana for that. And her life isn’t her own to wallow in anymore. There’s a little girl in a neon pink snowsuit running around in this park that needs her to be strong more than she needs to cry.

So she doesn’t. She swallows it: all that knowledge, all that violence, all those images she’s going to have to live with. It’s there in her gut for the rest of her life, like a guarantee that the worst of it is over. Nothing on this earth could ever be worse than this thing she’s swallowed. She survived that? She can survive anything.

Her friend has caught Ana’s attention, and the little girl is creeping slowly up to the bench where they’re sitting. Santana doesn’t take any notice, so Georgia pulls her daughter into her lap and holds her tightly, humming into the snow-covered, pink hat on her head.

“San’na sad, Mama,” Ana observes, and Georgia kisses her rosy-cold cheek.

“Yeah, baby. Santana’s very sad. Why don’t you go cheer her up. But be careful of her leg. She has a boo-boo.”

Ana crawls across the bench in her cumbersome snow suit and nudges her way under Santana’s arm, standing on the bench beside her maimed leg and laying her head across Santana’s chest. Santana can feel her humming more than she can hear it, the soft vibration of her throat against her body warming her ever so slightly. Her small hand rubs her shoulder in a circular motion that Santana is sure mimics the one her father used to make when he comforted his daughter. She slips her arms around Ana’s body and pulls her down so she’s sitting on her good leg, holding her close with her chin resting on top of Ana’s head. It calms her, having this little life piled into her lap, but she still can’t stop crying.

“I don’t know how to do this anymore,” she says quietly, rocking Ana in her arms while the girl hums to herself.

“Do what?”

Santana swallows hard, gulping down a mass of snot and baggage that nearly chokes her on the way down. “Live,” she says, meeting Georgia’s pitying gaze. “Like nothing ever happened. I can’t. I think I might have been better off if they’d killed me over there with Bobby.”

Georgia’s eyes go dark and she looks away, staring off at the horizon while the muscles in her jaw flex where she grinds her teeth. Santana can see the gears working, the anger bubbling up to the surface, and how much strength her friend is employing to keep it all at bay.

“Bobby insisted that we name her Ana,” she says, her voice hissing through her teeth like steam through a vent. “Because he told me you were the most obnoxious, hardheaded, enraging woman he’d ever met.”

Santana can’t help but smile, even though it hurts. “Sounds like an accurate description.”

“Yeah? Well it pissed me off,” Georgia snaps, and Santana falls quiet. “Because he wanted to name our daughter after another woman, and that made me so jealous that I thought about leaving him. He went on about you for days, weeks, talking about how much you made him angry and how much he wanted to knock you upside the head for never listening or breaking rank, and causing them all to do extra miles, extra push-ups. And then he’d tell me about how you’d keep him with the pack during a run, and how you never wavered in your beliefs, and how strong you were when assholes tried to take a cheap shot at you because you were gay or because you were a woman. And I understood why he’d want our daughter to be named after a person like that. A person of conviction and character. A woman she could look up to and model her life after. You don’t get to tell me that you would have been better off if you had died over there, because there are people waiting for you that don’t even know that you’re alive. Do you really think that hiding from Quinn and Brittany, or sending your parents away, is helping you? Do you have _any_ idea what I would give for someone to call me up and tell me that it’s okay, Bobby is alive, he’s just missing a few limbs? I would kill for that phone call, Santana. How dare you tell me that your life isn’t worth living anymore. You made it through the worst possible thing that a person can live through. You’re _alive_. You have another chance to do anything, _be_ anything. And you have a chance to be as strong as Bobby thought you were, because he’s not here anymore to tell Ana that she can be anything, too. And I’m sure as hell not strong enough to do it all on my own.”

She stands and lifts The Kid from Santana’s arms. She tries to get up as well, to plead for Georgia to wait, to listen, but her friend cuts her off.

“Bobby was taken from me for reasons that I can’t even begin to fathom. You got yours back. It’s your job to make the most of it.”

Santana watches her walk away, holding Ana on her hip. There’s no way she could catch her, even with a toddler weighing her down. So she sits and stares, waiting until she’s disappeared around the corner before beginning to cry again.

Georgia can hear her, even through the wind and around the bend. She stops and sets Ana down, then pulls out her cell phone. She dials a number, takes a deep breath, and waits.

“Frannie?” a sleepy woman asks. “S’that you?”

“No, I’m sorry,” she says, her voice trembling. “I don’t mean to bother you, but my name is Georgia Erickson. I’m a friend of Santana’s. Do you have a minute?”

//

Her leg bobs up and down at such a rate that it shakes the entire bench. Brittany is wide awake at her side, one hand at her mouth where she chews her nails mercilessly, and the other on Quinn’s knee, trying to make the bobbing stop. The Manhattan skyline looms in the distance, a wall of black shadows dotted by bright lights against the night sky. The train car sways, and the knot in Quinn’s stomach roils violently.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she says, the color in her face long since faded. Brittany squeezes her knee tighter. They sit silently, counting the seconds as the train pulls into Penn Station, and they disembark hand-in-hand.

There aren’t any cabs for blocks in any direction, so they walk together, the arms not tangled together hailing anything that even looks yellow. They’re walking south, toward 23rd Street, but the address that Georgia had given them is clear across town. It’s freezing; their bodies huddle together against the cold. This is why there aren’t any cabs. Everyone else is smart enough to have snatched them up already.

They settle for a crosstown bus, getting on board at 7th Avenue because they just can’t stand the bitter chill anymore. The traffic makes the ride feel like hours, just as the sixteen-hour train ride from Toledo had felt like weeks. But still they’re quiet, because at the end of this excruciating bus ride is what they’ve been searching for, and they don’t know if they’ll like what the find.

“First Avenue, 23rd Street,” the driver says over the PA system, and they stand on nervous legs. “Transfer available to the M15 bus.”

All they’d gotten was an address. Georgia had called and given it to them, insisting she couldn’t say any more.

“ _It’s not my place to tell you the rest,_ ” Quinn recalls her saying as she and Brittany exit the bus with their small bags slung over their shoulders. “ _But I know that if I were in your place, I would want someone to at least point me in the right direction.”_

So they’d gotten the next train they could, after Frannie dropped them back in Toledo, and now, nearing midnight, they stop in front of the address Georgia had given them.

“Five-Fifty First Avenue,” Brittany says, and they both stare up at the massive building that towers over them. “This is NYU Hospital, Quinn. Santana’s in the hospital.”

Maybe they should have figured it out sooner, but somehow it doesn’t seem real. She still clings to this notion that maybe Santana was just hiding from them because she’d changed her mind, because she didn’t really love Quinn and didn’t know how to face her. She’d never considered seriously that Santana might not be able to get to her. That she’d ended up in this place, so close to Quinn all this time, incapacitated and alone.

They push through the rotating doors and into the spacious lobby. It’s quiet; this close to midnight, she’s not surprised. There are armed Military Police guards at the entrance and although they don’t stop them from entering, they watch Quinn and Brittany carefully as they find the service desk and ask for Specialist Santana Lopez.

The nurse at the desk looks weary, and similarly gives them a once over before checking her computer.

“Specialist Lopez is on restricted visitation,” she says with a yawn. “No one except immediate family can see her. And even if you were family, it’s after visiting hours. Have a good night.”

The dismissal is so final that the nurse actually leaves her station, flicking her wrist at the guards as she slips behind a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only”. They two men in full combat gear and helmets approach them, and before they can object, they’re escorted outside.

The wind slaps them hard across their faces, adding insult to injury. Brittany turns to try to go back in, but Quinn holds her arm steady and shakes her head.

“Tomorrow,” she says. “We know she’s here. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

And they do, bright and early. The nurse on the morning shift is kinder, but gives them the same song about restricted visitation. The MPs at the door, different than the ones from the night before, don’t need to escort them out. They leave on their own, without a fight.

“They’re never going to let us in.” Brittany says as they make their way back to Washington Heights. “We’re not going to just walk away, are we? We can’t leave Santana alone in that place.”

Quinn shakes her head. “Never. We’ll never stop, Britt. I promise.”

They try again the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that for a week, unrelenting. Different nurses give them the same answer. _She’s on restricted visitation. No, I can’t tell you why. No, I can’t tell you her status._ They see the same nurses a few times, some who become aggravated at their stubbornness, and others who are endeared to it.

“Look,” one of them says on the eighth day, a mousey young thing who’s probably new and finds their persistence charming. “Come back at five. There’s a shift change, and you can walk right through to the elevators. Eleventh floor. She has PT then. You’ll find her in the workroom.”

February is exhaling, the cold beginning to wane and the snow and cold subsiding. They can’t go home, not when their window of opportunity is so small, so they wander in circles around the hospital, walking the boardwalk along the East River until their feet ache and their nerves have eaten away at their stomachs with angry snakes of acid. They hold hands and sit on the riverside, watching winter’s last breaths send waves across the water.

“What do we say to her?” Quinn asks, more to herself than Brittany.

“That we love her,” Brittany answers anyway, and Quinn smiles. Of course.

At four-fifty-nine they’re outside the revolving doors, watching the nurses gather their things for the shift change. The mousey one from that morning casts a quick look over her shoulder to the door before disappearing from sight, and the lobby is unattended. They surge forward, calmly and with purpose, then follow the signs to the elevator. No one is around to stop them.

Eleven floors may as well have been eleven hundred. The elevator climbs slowly, and the clear back shows them the sheer scope of the hospital that reaches up another fifteen floors beyond the eleventh they’re waiting for. Doctors get on and off at every level. Patients in wheelchairs, families, military personnel. No one says anything to them. There’s no reason.

They slip off at their stop. Quinn’s hands are shaking, her palms slick with nervous sweat. Brittany grabs one of them and squeezes. There are signs pointing the way, and they follow them down corridor after corridor of sterile white walls and bright fluorescent lights. They reach a double door with two small windows, thin wire mesh running between double paned glass. Next to the doors is a sign. _Workroom._

Quinn’s trembling hand reaches out, and pushes the doors wide.

She’s on a treadmill. Walking, talking. Alive. Her back is to them, but her high ponytail is the same as ever and her long black hair sways lightly with her jerky, unbalanced movements. She’s wearing a grey PT t-shirt, like the ones she’d left sweaty and smelling all over their apartment, before. There’s a dark line down her back. She’s been working hard, even though she’s walking slowly on the treadmill. Her shorts are black, stopping at mid-thigh, and then...

There’s a metal rod with a joint at the knee where her left leg used to be.

“Oh my god,” Quinn says, so low she’s not even sure she really said it. But every head in the room turns, and she’s suddenly aware that yes, she really did.

Santana’s neck rotates just enough for Quinn to see the scar that runs down her face to her collarbone. She sees the burns on the backs of her hands, the maimed leg that she’s relearning to walk on. Santana sees her, too, and her eyes go wide in... what? Surprise? Terror? And she loses her balance, falling.

Quinn tries to run to her, but there are strong hands on her arms, holding her back. The MPs from the lobby are behind them, holding them still.

“Let me go!” she shrieks, trying to pull herself free, trying to get to Santana, to help her. “She needs me!”

But there’s a shuffle of movement by the treadmill, and Quinn looks back to see Santana upright, a man with a clipboard at her side. He’s whispering to her, trying to calm her down, but her chest is heaving and she can’t seem to breathe.

“Get them out,” she says, hissing to the man at her side while her wild eyes find the floor, the ceiling, anything but Quinn and Brittany. “Get them out, I don’t want them here.”

“Santana, please,” Brittany pleads as the MP begins to pull them toward the door.

“Get them out of here! Get out, get out, get out!” The shout echoes down the hall while Quinn and Brittany are dragged away, listening to the sounds of sobs as the doors close behind them.

//

_Tick tick tick._

The clock on the wall is making her twitch. She stares at it, the second hand clacking out each movement as though it needs to announce just how slow this session is going.

_Tick tick tick._

The woman across from her in a high-backed, upholstered chair sits with her elbows on the armrests and her fingers folded in a pyramid across her mouth. She just watches, waiting expectantly. She has the patience of a Ghandi, Santana knows this, and they’ll both sit here listening to the clock in silence for the entire hour if she lets them.

_Tick tick tick._

Santana pulls at the lining of her socket beneath her pant leg. She pretends to find it incredibly fascinating, but she can still feel the burn of her therapist’s gaze boring holes through her skin. She should be used to this by now, because this is the same routine they go through every day. But today is entirely different, because today Quinn and Brittany have seen her, and for the first time since she got home from Germany, she feels the harsh sting of reality.

“Can you look somewhere else, please?” she asks, and the woman lowers her hands to her lap.

“What about my looking at you bothers you, Santana?”

“I just don’t like being stared at.”

It’s not a lie. But in another life, she’d loved being the center of attention; the one everyone turned to watch as she walked past, the one with the power to drop jaws and make girlfriends break up with their boyfriends. In another life, being stared at was a sport. Now, even in the confinement of this little office on the twelfth floor of the VA hospital with just this one middle-aged woman watching her, she feels naked and exposed.

Her therapist, Joan, turns up the corners of her mouth in what might have been a smile if her eyes had followed suit. But the green-greys are sad, and they remind Santana a little too much of Quinn.

“Do you want to tell me what happened at physical therapy last night?” Joan asks, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. Santana feels a pang of jealousy.

“Not really.”

Joan nods and looks down at the notebook she has open in her lap. She rustles through the pages, reading a few lines here and there while Santana shuffles uncomfortably in her seat. The awkward quiet might be worse than the talking.

“Peter told me you had a couple visitors,” Joan says, pushing the issue anyway. “They really upset you. The doctor on call says he had to sedate you after they left.”

Santana stares at the floor between her feet. With her shoes on, they’re identical. She’ll never wear a tight dress again, or knee-high boots, or heels. But in pants, no one would be the wiser. She’d rather think about that--that maybe one day she’ll walk into a room and no one will see her as the amputee--than talk about last night.

“Who were they, Santana?”

She’s so tired, despite twelve hours of dead sleep. The sedative had done its job, knocked her out and kept her out for longer than she’d slept since arriving stateside, but she feels lethargic and hungover as a result. She doesn’t want to talk about this. She hasn’t talked to Joan about anything before, why would she start now?

“Okay,” Joan says, closing the notebook and putting the end of her pen to her lip. “Okay, let’s talk about something else. What did you do when you left the hospital last week? Who did you see?”

Santana picks at her nails, wishing desperately for a file. They don’t allow those kinds of things in here when she’s alone with the doctor. Too many PTSD soldiers with the potential to freak out and lunge.

“You’d been ordered not to leave the hospital without an escort. What could possibly be worth the hassle of leaving in your condition? Weren’t you afraid you would injure yourself?”

There are a lot of things she’s afraid of, but getting hurt is no longer one of them. Syria had pulled that out of her, one nail at a time. Pain doesn’t really have a meaning anymore. So no, she wasn’t afraid. Desperate, maybe. Desperation is something she’s still well aware of.

“You seemed better when you came back. Lighter, like you’d been unburdened. You even smiled a few times. You don’t speak to me, but I think you may have found someone to talk to about your ordeal in Syria. Who did you speak to? A relative? A lover?”

“A friend,” Santana corrects, her hands in her lap, knotted and white-knuckled in the material of her shirt. “Someone who understands.”

Santana doesn’t look up, but she feels Joan’s movement as the woman leans forward in her chair. The air crackles with the therapist’s excitement. She might smirk if she was still the same girl that grew up in Lima Heights Adjacent. But she’s not.

“Another soldier, then?” When Santana is quiet, Joan inhales then nods. “The widow, Private Erickson’s wife. Did she understand you, Santana? Do you think it’s the same, your pain and hers?”

She sits in her chair, following the lines in her palm with her eyes. Her lifeline, the one that spans the width of her hand. It’s long. She thinks it might be mocking her.

“No,” she says, lifting her head and meeting Joan’s penetrating stare. “No, I think her pain is worse. I can get better. She can never get Bobby back.”

Joan’s smile finally reaches her eyes, and Santana is inclined to return it. It didn’t hurt like she thought it would, talking to Joan. And the proud-mother grin is hard to turn her nose up at.

“What did you tell Private Erickson’s wife when you went to see her?”

 _Too much,_ she thinks, and wonders if maybe it was even enough at all. Georgia would never feel the way she’d felt when they’d held Bobby on his knees. She’d feel the pain of his loss for the rest of her life, though. That’s plenty.

“That Bobby died brave,” she says. “How it was over there for us. How he fought and how much he loved her.”

“And what did you tell her about _you_ , Santana?”

She bites her lip. She doesn’t want to talk about it again, force herself to go through it. It already plays like a projector on the inside of her eyelids whenever she closes them.

“Santana?” Joan prompts, sitting on the edge of her seat. “What did you tell Mrs. Erickson about yourself?”

“That I was weak,” she says, and the lifeline on her palm becomes a riverbed as tears fall, creating deltas and streams in her hands. “That Bobby fought hard and I didn’t, and he died. And I should have died out there with him.”

Joan sets aside her notebook and pen with deliberate caution.  She stands up from her high-backed chair and crosses the small space between the two of them. She sits on the opposite end of the couch that Santana occupies, but makes no move to get any closer.

“Santana,” Joan says, her voice softening. “You just told me that you can get better. It was the first thing you’ve said to me in weeks. That tells me you believe it to be true. Is death really something you wish for?”

She can’t say that she hasn’t thought about dying. At the beginning, when the pain meds were wearing off and she finally saw how mangled she really was. When her mother sobbed on her father’s chest. When they fit her with the prosthetic. When Quinn and Brittany didn’t call, not once, and then showed up like nothing had happened.

Sure, she’s thought about it. But every thought is always followed by Bobby’s voice telling her, “Don’t break. We’ll be okay. Don’t break.” And Quinn’s eyes in the stars in the Syrian desert. And she knows she never would.

“No,” she says. “I want to live.”

Joan seems satisfied with that. “That’s very good to know, Santana.” She slips back into her chair, Santana breathing a little easier with the space between them. “Now we need to focus on the quality of the life you want to have when you leave here. Today has been good. Going out and finding someone you felt comfortable with to talk things through, that was even better. I know it’s hard, but I need you to trust me. Do that, and I promise that I will do everything in my power to help you get back to feeling as close to normal as possible.”

Santana digs the heel of her hand into her thigh, feeling the ache of what’s left of the muscle. She bites the inside of her cheek, staring at the way her pant leg falls over the thin metal rod of her prosthesis. Syria had taken a piece of her body, and the doctors had given her a replacement. Though not quite as good as the original, it was functional, and it had helped her stand up on her own again. But now she thinks a piece of her soul might be missing as well, the part that lets her feel happiness or joy or love. And she’s not really sure there’s a prosthesis for that.

“How?” she asks, wringing her hands together. She hopes, if somewhat vainly, that even if she can’t get that bit of herself back, Joan can help her find something to fill in the gap, or ways of coping without it.

Her therapist smiles with such deep satisfaction that Santana thinks she might have just had what could be termed a “breakthrough”.

“With patience,” Joan says, resuming the position with her elbows on her armrests and her fingers steepled at her lips. “And with the knowledge that the past does not determine the future, and with a support system to help you when you need it. Maybe you could start by telling me about the two women who snuck in last night.”

Santana, who had felt almost at ease a moment before, tenses. up. “I don’t want to talk about them.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?”

She nods and stares out the small, dirty window with a view of a brick wall.

“Will you be less uncomfortable about them tomorrow, or the day after?”

She considers that. Quinn and Brittany appeared back in her life, after she’d written them off as lost. She’d made it this far--alive, home, walking--all on her own, and now she has to deal with the fact that they’re not actually lost after all, and what that means to her in the long run.

And how Quinn’s eyes in the stars are still the only things she dreams about that don’t cause her to wake up screaming.

“No,” she says. “They’ll always make me uncomfortable.”

“Then why put off ‘til tomorrow, what makes you uncomfortable today, hmm?” Joan is trying to be funny, and even though it really isn’t, Santana grins anyway. She shakes her head, because she’s not quite sure how much this is going to hurt. Like ripping off a bandaid, or pulling fingernails with pliers?

“They were my friends.” She picks at her nails while she speaks, distracting herself from her own story. “Well, more than that. It’s complicated. We all grew up together. I loved them both at different points in my life. But when I left... they were just my friends.”

Joan inches forward in her seat, engaged fully. She doesn’t say anything, in case it pulls Santana off her focus. They’re finally getting somewhere.

“Brittany, she was the first girl I ever loved.” Joan notes the broad curve of Santana’s reminiscent smile. “We grew up together, had all our firsts together. Including my first heartbreak. Maybe my second and third, too. But definitely not my last. That one belongs to Quinn.”

The smile fades and the room goes quiet. Outside on the street far below, the cars shout back and forth at once another, fighting for space. A pigeon lands on the windowsill, cocking its head at both of them. Santana swallows and yearns again for a nail file.

“Quinn is, was, well... she saved me. Then she ruined me. Then she saved me again, when I was over there, even though she didn’t know she did it. Then she showed up here, and ruined me all over again.”

“Why did it ruin you?” Joan asks, head cocked curiously. “What were your first thoughts when you saw them last night?”

Santana fidgets, pulling at the hem of her shirt. There had been so many things she’d thought when she’d seen Quinn’s face, Brittany’s too. The first of which was relief. The second was terror.

“I thought they’d given up on me,” she says. “My mom said she called them and told them about me, but they never tried to come see me. Until last night, anyway. So when I saw them I was so happy, and so scared.”

“Why were you scared?”

“Because even though they hadn’t come to see me, I realized I hadn’t wanted them to. I’m not ready. I’m not whole yet.”

Joan smiles again. “But you want to be whole.”

It’s not a question, but Santana nods. “I thought I could do this, get on with my life, pretend for a while that I’m not a disaster. But then they walk in and suddenly I’m a wreck and I can’t pretend anymore. So tell me, Doc. How do I stop being a wreck? Because I want to see them. I want to be able to love Quinn again, without letting the sight of her ruin me.  So how can I just love her and not let _this--_ ” she jabs her index finger into her temple ,“--or _this--_ ” another jab, this time at her leg, “--prevent me from ever being normal again?”

Joan licks her lips and sits back, her head tilted and her eyes wandering over Santana’s face. She examines her, looking for something, then she laces her fingers together in her lap. “Trust, Santana. Trust me, trust your family, trust your friends. Trust them like you trusted Mrs. Erickson, because even if they don’t understand, they came here, and that means they want to try.”

Santana chews on that for a while, looking out the window at the pigeon who paces up and down the sill, looking for a way in out of the cold. She wrings her hands, thinking. Trust is hard to come by if you’re a person with a whole brain. Finding it with her broken one is going to be hard. But if Joan is right, and Quinn and Brittany are willing to try, then so is she.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I trust you.”

//

Snow has given way to rain, and as she sits on a bench outside the VA hospital, Quinn drowns in it. She holds an umbrella over her head, but it doesn't protect her legs or feet, or prevent the water on the bench beside her from soaking into her pants. She shivers, but still she sits.

They won't even let her in the building anymore. All the nurses have been informed that she's a menace, and disturbs the patients. Like she's some kind of criminal, her photo hangs behind the reception desk. It's the same at the emergency entrance, and at the service door as well. Some of them look at her with pity, but send her away all the same.

"Please," she says, "Just for a minute. You can come with me, all I want to do is see her."

But they shake their heads and threaten softly, their hands on the phone with security on speed dial. They all know she's not going to cause a scene, but she tries every day just the same. What else can she do, really, but try?

She's already been sent away once today. She'll go back again at the shift change, but until then, she sits in the rain, thinking. Her time is almost up. The offer from the firm downtown is going to expire tomorrow, and she finds herself no caring all that much. If she doesn't have Santana, why should she care about a job she doesn't really want anyway? It's not a very good firm, with little reputation to speak of. It's far away from home, further from the hospital, and what can she expect to get done when all she's thinking about is Santana, screaming.

_Get them out of here! Get out, get out, get out!_

It repeats in her dreams. Again and again, Santana's cries become like banshee shrieks, deafening her. She wakes up sweating, or with Brittany shaking her.

"Quinn, you're crying. It's okay, it's okay."

Brittany will meet her here later, once she's done with her classes at the studio. She's moving on, getting up in the morning with more spring in her step, a smile on her face.

"How can you go about like nothing's wrong?" Quinn keeps asking, but Brittany just pats her on the shoulder, then kisses her forehead.

"She's been through hell. When she's ready, she'll call us."

But Quinn isn’t so sure. The screams are still etched on her eardrums, and even though she knows Santana has been through a lot, it felt personal. Like maybe Santana was ready, but maybe just not ready for _Quinn_. And it makes her chest clench violently, her lungs stop working and her heart refuse to pump, just for a second. Because what if Santana never wanted to see her again? What if Quinn could never tell her this thing she’s been holding on to? What if the Santana she knew died out there, in Syria?

She can’t allow that. Not for one second. She’d given up before, pushed Santana away and made her think that she wasn’t enough. But Quinn is sure now. More than ever, she knows that the only thing Quinn really wants out of life is for Santana to share it with her. And no injury, no trauma, will ever change her mind about that. And if she has to sit on this bench until it rots away beneath her, then so be it.

At the very least, she’ll sit here until Santana is released, job be damned. She’ll find another one. One closer to home, so she can help Santana if she needs it. Or one close to the VA, so she can come see her during physical therapy, or take her to appointments. Be the cheerleader she deserves. Hell, she’ll even break out her old pompons. At least until Santana is ready to be on her own. Quinn knows her girl could never be off her feet for long. And Quinn wants to be there for all of it. She just needs to find a way to prove that to Santana. That she’s in this, no matter what.

She’s smiling when a body plops next to her, and huddles underneath half her umbrella. Brittany shivers  in the cold and shakes off her wet hair like a tall, gangly golden retriever.

“Ugh,” she whines, dragging out her throaty groan dramatically and slipping an arm through Quinn’s. “How can you sit out here all day, Q? It’s a miracle you don’t have pneumonia.”

“The power of positive thinking,” she says with a grin, and nudges Brittany with her elbow.

“Since when have you ever been a positive thinker?”

Quinn tilts her umbrella back, the rain pelting her in the cheeks as she looks up at the facade of the VA, searching the windows for a familiar face. She finds none, but smiles just the same. “Since there’s no other option. If I want Santana back, I have to work for it, and this is where I start.”

Brittany eyes her warily. “Here? On this bench, in the rain?”

She nods. “And if I’m going start here, then I’m going to do it thinking positively. Because I can be cold and wet and unhappy, or I can be cold and wet and hopeful. I’m choosing the latter.”

Pressure is applied to her arm, a worried hand tightening there. “What about the job?”

Her mother’s voice sing-songs in her head. _Quinnie, honey, you need to get a good job so you can marry a successful lawyer who will take care of you when you have your babies._ And she laughs at herself for ever thinking that her mother would see her job anything other than a means to an end.

“I’ve spent most of my adult life working toward a goal,” she says, watching the cars passing on the street and the people walking with their umbrellas open and collars up around their ears, going about their days, unencumbered. “I wanted to be a _lawyer_. I wanted to prove that I was better than Lima, better than my mother, better than my father. It became this sort of mythical notion, like attaining it would give me the keys to Mount Olympus or something. Like everything in my life would just start working if I could just become this one thing. Then Santana showed up and my plan stopped making sense. The idea that I could be _happy_ with her was terrifying. It’s Santana, you know what she’s like. What _I’m_ like. And the two of us together?”

Brittany snorts. “World war three. I remember. _Stop the violence._ ”

She can still feel the sting of Santana’s hand across her cheek, feel her fingers knotting in Santana’s ponytail. It really wasn’t any different than some of the activities they’d engaged in when they were living together. Although, the end result of _those_ activities wasn’t usually a slew of insults and a teacher touching her inappropriately, but rather a snicker, a cigarette, and a nap. Quinn heaves, reminiscent, forcing out all the hot, stale air from her lungs to form a thick cloud against the cold. “I didn’t know what to do. So I ruined it, like I ruin everything. But I kept going anyway, because that’s what I do. I keep going, no matter what. And I’m a lawyer now. I have this opportunity to work at this firm and actually make something of myself, but the only thing I can think about right now is that Santana is up there, and I’m down here. I’ve got what I wanted, Britt. But it’s not going to make me happy. The only thing that will make me happy is up there.”

She gestures up to the building in front of them, somewhere in the vicinity of the eleventh floor, somewhere near Santana. As close as she can get, really. This sweeping motion of her arm that could encompass the whole building. So close, and yet...

Brittany follows her gesticulation and stares quietly up at the hospital facade and the mostly darkened windows. Quinn wonders if she’s still talking to Alex, if she’s going to leave now that they know Santana is alive and, if not well, then on her way to being. She wonders, selfishly, if she’ll have to sit on this bench alone soon.

“You can have both,” Brittany says, her eyes still lifted into the rain. “Her and the job. You’re strong enough to do both.”

“My little feminist,” Quinn muses and squeezes Brittany’s arm. “I know, B. But for right now, with things the way they are, I couldn’t be happy taking a job that I don’t really want when I could be making up for lost time with her. It’s been a year now. And I think she needs me, even if she’s not ready just yet. So I’m going to wait until she is. And I don’t want to be in some stuffy office, distracted, when that happens. I just wish they’d let me tell her that.”

There’s no answer from her friend, and Quinn turns to find Brittany focused intently on the building in front of them, brows knit in deep concentration. Her head is cocked, like a confused puppy, and Quinn resists the urge to scratch behind her ears. Brittany shoots to her feet, the sodden umbrella shoved aside so that they’re both immediately soaked in the deluge.

“I have an idea,” she says and, without waiting for Quinn, takes off in long, quick strides toward First Avenue. Quinn huffs and charges after her, trying to hold the umbrella over her head against the wind, but failing miserably. Her teeth are chattering by the time she catches up to Brittany and her long legs at the bus stop.

“Does this idea involve a wet t-shirt contest? Because I think I might win,” Quinn says, her jaw aching as she tries to stop the violent clatter of her teeth.

Brittany shakes her head and steps up into the warm dryness of the bus that has arrived, pulling Quinn behind her. “Nope, but it does involve getting you out of the rain. You can’t have the flu when we go talk to Santana.”

The thought warms Quinn, and she settles into a seat next to Brittany. “Okay,” she says with a grin. “I trust you.”

//

The social worker on the other side of the desk is disheveled. The nameplate on her desk tells Santana that her name is Rita DeAngeles. She’s a civilian, dressed in her black polyester suit with a garish orange blouse underneath. Santana thinks it’s supposed to be some kind of pastel, but it’s only a few shades away from neon and the woman looks like a scarecrow you’d find decorating a porch in Lima on Halloween.

Beware, trick-or-treaters, or you’ll end up a haggard desk jockey, too.

“What were your skills, prior to enlisting?” she asks, shuffling piles of papers from one side of her desk to the other. Shifting mountains, the god of her domain.

Santana shrugs. “Slinging beers, avoiding grabby-handed drunks, chipping gum off the undersides of tables. I shook a pretty mean pompon back in the day. Sang a few songs on a few stages, too.”

Rita looks up over the top of her glasses, skeptical. Santana’s been through too much to see that reproachful face and flinch, so she snaps her gum and grins.

“Specialist...” she shuffles through a pile of folders and flips one open, confirming she’s talking to the right person, “ _Lopez_ , I’m trying to help you reintegrate successfully into civilian life.” She shuffles more papers, flips through a file with someone else’s name on the tab. “At least do me the courtesy of being twenty-five percent serious.”

“Well, if we’re only going for twenty-five percent, then I take back what I said about the pompons.”

She doesn’t laugh, and Santana sinks back into her well-worn chair. She rubs the joint in her prosthetic, feeling an ache that isn’t really there, like she’s an old woman with arthritis that flares up when it rains. And it’s pouring outside. Has been for days, and she wishes it would just go back to snowing. Snow they could shovel off the sidewalks, put down salt to keep ice from building up. Rain everywhere and streets slippery and gutters ankle-deep with water made it hard for her to go take the walks she found herself desiring. They’d lifted her restricted access, but the rain prevented her from leaving just the same. It figured.

“Computers?” she asks, pushing forward and ignoring Santana’s flip comment. “Typing? Customer service? Anything at all?”

Santana sighs. “Lady, I left high school and spent the next four years pouring beers in shitty bars. I joined the reserves because it was supposed to be the career I was looking for. And look how that turned out.” She pats her metal knee almost affectionately. “You want to talk careers? Why didn’t you pop up in my life when I was eighteen? I needed a career counselor then a lot more than I do now.”

She slumps back in her seat dejectedly. This  feels like a waste of time. She has no idea what to do now; she has nothing left to fall back on. She’s sure that Smitty would take pity on her and give her her old job back, but who wants to hit on a bartender with one leg and big ass scars all over her face and hands? And forget about working during the rush. She’ll fall over for sure, on all that beer and spit and sweat that ends up on the floor. No, she’s a hazard to Smitty’s business. She can’t ask him to risk himself like that. So what else does she have? Nothing.

“I understand this is a difficult adjustment period in your life,” her social worker says, lacing her fingers together, her elbows on her desk. “Your injury and your... _time in the service_ makes you a high risk case. Your therapist has diagnosed you with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you’re no longer suited for many jobs you might have been able to hold without your disability, and you have no family in the immediate area. The way I see it, when you’re discharged you’ll have three options: One, you could enter a residential facility for veterans; a halfway house with other soldiers in similar situations. Get a job at McDonald’s. Two, you go home to your parents. Let them figure out what to do with you. Three, live a meager life on your own with the assistance of your disability and social security benefits, which won’t even cover the rent. Chances are you’ll be homeless within a year. There are three quarters of a million homeless veterans in the United States. They can’t keep jobs or a current address because of their PTSD or other disabilities. You have both. You have no identifiable skills, you have no family, no friends. It’s not a huge leap to assume that, without assistance, you’ll fall through the cracks. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Santana stares at the stacks of folders on Rita’s desk, growing like tumors here and there. The wall behind her is lined with file cabinets, filled with more folders filled with stories about other soldiers just like her. Wounded, alone, no prospects to speak of. Nameless men and women who fought to keep their country free, and to help free those who could not free themselves. And this woman was the best they could do. A woman who didn’t even know her name.

“You’re it, huh?” Santana says, still studying the room, estimating the number of cases this social worker might see on a daily basis, how many people are in her care that she doesn’t actually care about. “The last line of defense between me and panhandling on the subway for change? I wasn’t kidding about singing on stages, I could probably make a go of it singing on the streets. If you’re the best the army has to offer, I think I’ll take my chances.”

“Specialist, I--”

“Save it,” Santana puts up her hand and waves the woman off. “You’re overwhelmed, I get it. It looks to me like you might be one of a handful of social workers in the tristate area, given the files you’ve got piled up here. Working out mathematically that there are three quarters of a million homeless vets in this country, that means about forty-five thousand of them are in your jurisdiction. Now, I’m not blaming you for all of it because I’m sure some were beyond help long before you started here. But I’m sure as hell not going to put my future in the hands of someone--in the hands of a _system--_ with a record like that.”

She pushes herself to her feet, and takes up the cane next to her chair. She’s gotten pretty good with it, even though she still feels unstable without her crutches.

“I’m not a charity case.” She looms over the desk, and the haggard social worker doesn’t blink. “I’m worth more than a halfway house and a job at McDonald’s. I gave my leg for this country. My friends gave a helluva lot more. And I’ll be damned if I just sit here and let you tell me that I only have three options for my future, when up until five minutes ago you didn’t even know my goddamn name.”

She’s breathing heavy, at once angry and elated. Her spine feels straighter, her shoulders broader, her leg stronger. She’s standing tall, on her own, for the first time in a very long time. And she thinks she might actually be smiling.

There’s a lull in the room. A pause that’s filled with the honking of horns outside the window on the street below, the buzz of traffic, the pattering of the rain. The social worker takes off her glasses and leans back in her chair.

“You don’t want to be a charity case?” Rita asks. “Good. The army doesn’t want that either. So how about instead of yelling at me, you tell me how I can help you, so those three options don’t become all there is.”

Santana eyes her for a moment before lowering herself shakily into the chair she’d just risen from. She nods and hangs her cane from the arm, settling back in. “Sorry.”

Rita shrugs. “You didn’t throw anything. No harm done. Now, you don’t like your options. Fine. Give me another one, and I’ll do my best to make it happen.”

She wilts, leaning back and staring out the window. For all her shouting about not being a charity case, deserving a better future, she doesn’t really see one. She doesn’t have anything; no skills, no background, no work experience. She had Smitty’s, and she had the Reserves, and she had Quinn. That had been enough. But now all of it is gone. It’s overwhelming.

“You said you could have used me when you were eighteen,” Rita prompts, drawing Santana’s attention away from the window, slick with rivulets that distort the outside like a carnival mirror. “Imagine that you _are_ eighteen.”

Santana scoffs and rolls her eyes, but Rita holds up her hand.

“Now, wait a minute. Think about it. You said you could have used guidance back then. Why?”

She shrugs. “My dad wanted me to go to medical school. He’s a doctor. I didn’t want to do anything that would make him happy. So I moved to LA with my girlfriend and slung beer until I hated myself, and then I joined the army. I thought it would give me purpose.”

“Was that what _you_ wanted? To move to LA?” Santana shakes her head and averts her eyes, and Rita pushes. “If someone other than your dad had asked you what you wanted to do, what would you have told them?”

Silence hangs over them while Santana ponders. She thinks about herself at 18, about the check her mother had given her when she graduated, how she’d cashed it and packed for LA with Brittany. She thinks about the scholarship at Louisville she turned down because she didn’t want to be seen as just a cheerleader for the rest of her life. She thinks about what that scholarship might have given her other than the cheerleader reputation. Respect, an education, a career, a future. One that didn’t involve battling the hands of drunks and reeking of beer or losing a leg in a war.

“I want to go to college,” she says, and the sound of it surprises both of them.

Rita nods, with a smile that is both proud of Santana and self-satisfied spreading from ear to ear. “Okay,” she says. “I think I can help you with that.”

//

The first sunny and mild day of the year finds Santana in Sheep Meadow, sitting on a blanket near the treeline while Georgia chases Ana around the grass, just within shouting distance. She leans back on her hands, her legs--leg--stretched out in front of her. The sky above is some of the brightest blue she’s ever seen, with thick, pillowy clouds that hover comfortingly. There’s little wind, so they drift to and fro, stretching and reforming as they will. She watches them, then Ana in turn. The little girl is out of her pink snowsuit and her legs have grown stronger, more stable and confident on the safety of dry grass. It’ll be spring in a few weeks, and now that the snow has melted, it seemed like a good time to introduce her to Central Park. Georgia had called and informed her that the three of them would be making the trip. Santana didn’t have to agree. It was a given that she’d do as Georgia asked.

Her jailbreaks to Jersey had been silent car rides with Fort Dix officers and one tumultuous and nauseatingly expensive cab. But when she’d left the VA to meet Georgia, she’d taken the subway for the first time in almost a year. Unsteadily she’d leaned on her cane as she descended the stairs onto the platform, standing well back from the edge in case she was bumped or jostled. She’s still unsure in crowds, feeling claustrophobic and nervous that one push could send her careening, or the brush against her shoulder isn’t an innocent mistake, but someone trying to tie her to a chair. It’d been a silly thing to think, of course, but she couldn’t help it. There’s a terrible sense of paranoia that takes over whenever she leaves the safety of the hospital. But when she’d told Joan about Georgia’s invitation and her reservations, her doctor had insisted she go. Immersion therapy, she called it. Surround yourself by that which you fear, and it will no longer scare you. So she stood on the subway platform, in the throngs of commuters on their way about their days, between Chinese tourists carrying bags and bags of shopping, between mothers pushing strollers and not caring who they run over in the process. She’d stepped carefully onto the subway car, leaning on her cane and holding onto the pole for balance, and took a deep breath.

A young man with tattoos had given up his seat for her, seeing her combat jacket, her scars,  her cane. He called her ma’am. She thought maybe the world wasn’t so bad after all. And twenty minutes later, she was outside the park entrance, unscathed.

Walking alone in the crowds of Central Park after the train had been just as scary as the train itself. She’d felt like she needed a man on her six, watching her back with a rifle. It was hard to know that the only men she trusted like that, to have her back, were dead now. She’d shuddered, but steeled herself just the same. She couldn’t think like that here. It wasn’t the same as it was back in Syria. This was her home. Or at least the closest she could come by. She’d be discharged at the end of the month, once she’d been cleared by Joan, and she still didn’t know where she’d be going. She’d hoped to maybe ask Georgia to let her come back today. If it wasn’t too much trouble.

Of course, she made it safely onto the meadow to find Georgia and Ana sitting with the blanket. There had been lunch waiting for her: sandwiches and potato salad, some apple juice and bottled water. Santana was grateful for anything that wasn’t hospital food, and thanked Georgia as she helped herself to seconds of everything. They talked for awhile, about Ana, and Georgia’s new job as a secretary for the Harbor Master at the docks, who’d heard about Bobby and asked her if he could help. She hadn’t wanted charity, just a way to make a living wage. Bobby’s death benefits were going into a college fund for Ana. She wasn’t about to use that to keep them day to day when she was perfectly capable of getting work and providing for her child. Santana had understood, of course, having had a similar conversation with Rita not long before. No one likes being the charity case.

She’d told Georgia about college. How she’d start at CUNY in the fall, taking classes at Hunter.

“Psychology,” she’d said through her bites of bologna and cheese on white. “And then maybe a Master’s, so I can be a counselor, or a social worker. Help other people like me get their lives back. The GI Bill should cover most of it. In the meantime I’ll try tending bar again, somewhere dark so no one has to look at the scarred up, crippled vet too closely.”

Georgia had scolded her for that last bit, but had been too proud of the rest to linger on it long. She’d pulled Santana into a hug she hadn’t known she’d needed, and it had left both of them in tears.

Ana had gotten restless and wanted to run. She’d tried pulling Santana up, but Georgia intervened and began chasing her. Across the meadow and in between the other picnickers, they had their fun while Santana wiped her eyes and watched.

She’s there now, on that blanket, alternating between the clouds and The Kid. There’s still the itch she feels to reach for her sidearm whenever she sees someone moves too quickly out of the corner of her eye, but she’s slowly letting it go. Her prosthesis is off and resting at her side, letting her chafed skin and aching muscles breathe for a bit. She smirks to herself and sighs, thinking, _Damn, I’m out of shape._ She closes her eyes and lets the sun, which she hasn’t seen since Christmas, cleanse her. It’s lighter than the sun in Syria, where the sky was a constant shade of yellow-white, washed out in the heat and the barrenness of the desert. It filters through her thin lids so her vision is a haze of deep reds and oranges that flicker with the movements of her eyes and emphasize the veins there. Here, with the clear cerulean sky overhead, there’s life. Not just from the rains that have brought the trees to bud, or the children running around her with their shrieks of innocent laughter, but everywhere. In the grass, in the air, in her, where she hadn’t felt it sparking since before. She feels it now, somewhere in her gut. Not a fire yet, but a spark. And that’s good enough for now.

The orange haze grows darker as a shadow crosses her path. Santana opens one eye and squints through it, seeing Georgia standing above her with flush-faced Ana in her arms.

“Don’t be angry, okay?” she says, then bites her lower lip and looks up at the treeline behind them.

Santana turns as far as her leg will allow, her hand over her eyes like a visor. Shadowed beneath a canopy of bare branches, standing shoulder to shoulder with their hands held between them, are Quinn and Brittany.

There’s an instantaneous moment of panic that jolts through her body like lightning, and she tries to scramble to her feet, only to realize that she’s taken her leg off, and she’s trapped there. Her cheeks flush and her stomach clenches and she turns away, reaching for the prosthesis and cursing Georgia under her breath.

“No,” she hisses, trying not to let them hear her, her shaky fingers fumbling with the velcro straps. “What the fuck, Georgia? No.”

There’s no sound behind her, Quinn and Brittany making no move to come closer. Georgia squats at her side and props Ana up on her hip. “Hear them out,” she says, and leans in to kiss Santana on the temple. “Please. I’ll be right over there the whole time.”

Georgia pushes herself to standing, gives a nod to the pair that are still behind Santana, and takes cautious steps backward. Santana stiffens and tries to call Georgia back, but her friend turns and keeps walking with Ana staring at her over her shoulder.

She refuses to turn around. She squeezes her eyes shut and waits for approaching footsteps, but hears none. They’re keeping their distance. She’s grateful for that.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Quinn says, her voice trembling. “But if you could just listen, maybe... you’ll never have to see us again, if you don’t want to. Just listen, okay?”

That voice. That voice she’d heard in her head a thousand times when she couldn’t sleep in the silence. That voice that spoke to her while she was in the dark room with those women, when she was tied to a chair, when Bobby... It had never trembled like that. It was never scared, like she had been in Syria. It was strong because she needed it to be. Now that voice is nervous and hopeful and at the same time she hears joy in it. She doesn’t speak, just sits and stares ahead, trying to control the shaking of her hands.

There’s a pause, a rustle, a whispered exchange. When next she hears, it’s Brittany who speaks, not Quinn. “We don’t know what you’ve been through,” she says, and in the distance Santana listens for Ana’s shrieking giggle. “And we don’t expect anything from you. We just wanted to come and tell you that we’re here for you. If you need us. If you want us.” There’s a muffled thud, like an elbow hitting a ribcage. “And we’re sorry it took us so long to find you. We should have been here sooner.”

She’s clenching and unclenching her hands, watching the tremors in her burned fingers and feeling the tightness of the skin there. She can’t imagine them showing up when the skin had been raw and pink and smelling of infection. If they had seen her like that, would they still be saying they’re sorry? Or would they be searching for a way out?

“In our defense, it took us awhile to figure out where you were,” Brittany says, and it doesn’t sound like an excuse. “Your mom stopped taking our calls and we were nearly arrested trying to get information from Fort Dix. We even went back to Lima to try to talk to Maribel in person, but she wasn’t exactly forthcoming. If it hadn’t been for Georgia we might still be looking for you. She’s worried about you. We all are.”

They’re pulling at one another, Brittany poking Quinn and trying to shove her forward, toward where Santana sits with  her leg half off and her brain a tangled knot of confusion. Quinn is resisting, and Santana would still just really prefer that they went away, if only so she can yell at Georgia in peace.

“Your mom called us back in January,” Brittany says when the silence has grown thick between them. “She told us you were out of Syria, and that you were okay. And that was it. She didn’t tell us...”

She trails off, sniffling, and Santana’s interest is piqued now. She turns her head enough that Brittany and Quinn are just beyond her periphery, but she can hear them better. She knew her mom was manipulative, but this?

“We spent months looking for you,” she continues, her words jumbling together as she tries to explain, to justify why they were so long in arriving. “We called Maribel every day. She never answered. I swear, Santana, we would have been there for everything if we had only known...”

And all the while Quinn stands silently at her side, staring. Santana can feel Quinn’s eyes on her neck, her shoulders, her back, drinking her in. She feels them stop on her exposed hands, the scars spiderwebbing from her fingertips to her wrists, and again on her face, the side of which is turned toward them just enough to show them the remains of the wound that cut her from her temple to her collarbone. She can feel it, but she doesn’t feel pity, as she’d expected. She feels guilt and remorse and _please turn around._ But she can’t. Her life with Quinn ended a year ago, and she’s not ready to begin a new one. Not yet.

And yet, she still needs to know...

“She really didn’t tell you what happened?” she asks, so quiet she thinks she might have to repeat herself. “My mom. She told you I was okay?”

“She said you were alive, and out of harm’s way, and that you wanted us to know that,” Brittany recites almost excitedly, hopeful at Santana’s response, and remembering each and every time Quinn had made her repeat Maribel’s words. “But then she hung up, and we never heard from her again. Not until we went to see her, in Lima. And even then... She thought we would hurt you again. She was trying to protect you, Santana. You shouldn’t be mad at her, if that’s what you’re thinking about... God, I wish you’d tell us what you’re thinking. I wish you’d talk to us, tell us what we can do for you. But if you don’t want to, we’ll go now.”

They wait, hands held tightly between them, their palms clammy with nervous sweat. Santana’s face is turned ever so slightly toward them, but her eyes are on the trees, their limbs swaying in the breeze. She makes no move to look at them, to say anything, to tell them they should stay. And their hearts sink as one.

“Maybe she’s just not ready,” Brittany whispers, trying to conceal her voice from Santana, who doesn’t seem to be listening. “I was wrong, Quinn. I’m sorry, this was a bad idea. I thought that if she saw us again...”

Quinn is fighting her tears, fighting her desire to run to Santana, who is so close and yet might as well be back in Syria. The clenching in her throat feels like a hand trying to suffocate her, to squeeze the air from her lungs. She can’t wait any longer, she can’t hold it back, this thing she needs to say. She’d wanted to wait until Santana was ready, but what if she never is? What if this is the last chance she has?

“I love you.”

It comes in a burst, like it had been struggling to get out and finally found the strength to escape the place in Quinn’s chest where it had been held captive. It echoes in the barren trees, whose limbs sway and shake under the force of it. Santana sits rigid, her back stiff and military straight, and Quinn has to take a deep breath--several--to try and control the quickening in her chest. She’s waited so long for this, and she already feels like she’s screwed it up. But it’s been released, and now that the dam is broken, there’s no stopping the rest of it from tumbling out in a deluge.

“I love you,” she repeats. “I love you, and I’m so sorry that I’m an idiot and it took me so long to tell you. I wanted to, so badly. Before I got your letters, before you went to Syria. Hell, even before you left me. And when you wrote to me, it was the _only_ thing I wanted to tell you. But I needed the first time I said it to be to your face, so you could see how much I meant it. So I just begged you to come back to me, so I could do that. Do _this_. I need you to know that I love you, Santana. I love you as a bartender, I love you as a soldier, I love with with both your legs or completely limbless. I’ll love you even if you never want to see me again. And I know it might be too late now. But I needed you to know, because you _did_ come back to me, and if I didn’t tell you, even if if doesn’t mean anything to you anymore, I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t say it. Because you deserve to know that you’re loved, Santana, even if I have to love you from somewhere else.”

Children laugh across the field. Birds fly overhead, their wings flapping to keep them aloft. A cart vendor pushes his wares along a path, a bell jingling with each step. Quinn’s chest expands and contracts in deep, desperate gulps. She can’t seem to get enough air. And Santana still isn’t turning around. She’s fiddling with the straps on her artificial limb, and Quinn realizes that there’s nothing left to say.

“I love you,” she says again, and Brittany is pulling on her arm, gently reminding her that she needs to respect Santana’s wishes. And even though it’s the worst thing she’s ever done--worse than their fights in high school, worse than being withholding during their relationship, worse than valuing her success over everything else, worse than waiting this long to tell her that she loved her--she turns away, to leave.

Brittany is clinging to her, making sure she doesn’t look back, pulling her forward, one foot in front of the other. They move together, hip-to-hip, stoic. All Quinn can think is, _I don’t blame her._ Her eyes are swollen and her nose is running so badly that she doesn’t even try to dam it. There are worse things than looking like a punching bag. Walking away? That’s one of them.

“Wait.”

The command is sharp and impersonal, but they both whirl, fighting to stay upright on the slippery grass. They find their balance on one another, and there, next to her blanket, is Santana. She’s standing, leaning on her cane with her back as military straight as she can make it. Her face is unreadable; she stands like she would in rank, chin high and shoulders stiff.

“San--” Quinn begins, but she’s quickly cut off.

“Wait.”

Brittany and Quinn are frozen in place as they do as Santana asks, and wait. She watches them, hesitant, before she takes a step toward them. They both inhale, holding their breaths.

Her artificial leg kicks out, the heel digging into the wet ground and finding purchase. She pulls herself forward slowly, leaning on her cane when it digs into the mud with a squish. Her good leg swings round and she’s beginning the cycle again, proving a point that they are sure to understand. Another step, the leg swinging outward and coming back down, heel first. Quinn thinks back to that day in the workroom, the Santana she saw on the treadmill, the one who’d fallen at the sight of them and screamed in terror. She looks at this woman now, striding toward them with dignity and purpose, and she realizes she’s crying again.

 _That’s my girl_.

Santana stops just out of arm’s reach, straightening up once more. She looks back and forth between the two of them, her eyes not giving away her intentions. Quinn is prepared to be slapped. She deserves that much.

But Santana surprises both of them by letting her shoulders relax, and softening her voice. “I am not a victim,” she says. “I’m a soldier. I’m a survivor.”

“I know,” Quinn murmurs, her fingers itching to be holding a hand other than Brittany’s. “I know, you’re strong.”

“You can’t fix me. I’m not your charity case.” Santana takes a small step closer, and Quinn pulls her fingers free

“I don’t want to fix you,” she says, her palm up but her arm at her side. “I don’t even think you’re broken.”

“I don’t need saving. I save myself.” Another step. Quinn can see in graphic detail the scars that riddle Santana’s skin. She reaches out, but Santana stiffens and she immediately pulls back.

“Of course,” she agrees, flexing her stupidly overreactive hand into and out of a fist. Her nails dig into her palms and she studies the way Santana’s eyes have creased at the edges, little deltas in the corners that are remnants of a long, hard life lived in a very short period of time. “Santana, yes. Of course.”

“You weren’t there.” Her voice is a hushed whisper, reverent and frightened and hollow. Santana fixates on Quinn, those wizened eyes searching for a connection she’d thought she’d lost. “You weren’t there. In Syria, in that room, when I got out. You’ll never know, and I don’t know if I can ever tell you.”

“You don’t have to.” Quinn flexes again, but this time it’s Santana that reaches out, her pink-patterned hand flailing for something to hold, and Quinn obliges. She closes the last step between them and her fingers find Santana’s, and it’s as though someone has just put a still-beating heart in her palm. She turns it over, inspecting the way the grafts grew against Santana’s own skin. The way the burns had caused her fingers to curl into a tight ball, only to be freed by German doctors debriding the wounds with scalpel slices from joint to joint. Quinn wonders if the nerves are intact, if Santana can feel her own fingers tracing the scars, in awe of them, and of the woman who wears them. She brings the hand to her lips and traces them again and again, trying to soothe their shaking.

She slips her free hand into the pocket of her dress, feeling the item she’s held on to for so long that it’s become an extension of herself. She pulls it out and presses it into Santana’s curled fingers.

Santana stares at it, disbelieving. The note card is soft like cloth from wear, but her own handwriting is still legible beneath a ringed water stain. The number in the corner is nearly invisible, and the neon highlighter has faded to a baby pink pastel. It’s the last part of a life she’d thought she’d lost in that explosion on a dark road in Syria, with the rest of the notes and Quinn’s postcards and a piece of her soul.

 _I know you’re scared_ , it says. And she is.

“Quinn...” Santana’s throat chokes off the name, and Quinn looks up. The deltas at the corners of Santana’s eyes are now flooded rivers, and she wipes them all away. “Quinn, say it again. Please.”

“I love you,” she says, winding a hand around her too-thin waist and letting her forehead rest gently against Santana’s, so their eyes are locked. “I love you as a bartender, I love you as a soldier. I love you with both your legs or completely limbless. I’ll love you if you never want to see me again, or if you let me see you every day for the rest of our lives.”

Lips unmarred by war find hers and they are as they were before, hands and heat and desire. Hands to hold each other up. Heat to keep them warm. Desire to be nothing but together, together, together. For as long as they can be, for as long as inevitability will let them.

 _I love you_ , they say.

_I love you._

//

Across the green, Brittany leans against the thick trunk of a old elm, just beginning to bud. They hadn’t even noticed her step away. She takes a deep breath, watching the two of them together, and she’s surprised at the ease she feels about that. There’s no pang of jealousy in her heart, no stab of remorse in her gut. She’s comfortable, seeing them together, their heads bent together and their hands woven like the threads of a quilt. She’s happy for them. And she’s ready to move on.

For a moment she wrinkles her nose, catching a scent. Maybe it’s the beginning of the bloom that carries on the breeze, or a caretaker mowing the grass somewhere nearby. But the smell is distinct, and she thinks she knows what it might be, truly.

Change.

She inhales again, drinking of it. She gives Quinn and Santana one last look, but they’re too enamored of one another to notice. Taking the phone from her pocket, she turns and begins an unhurried stroll down the cobblestone path and out of the park. The number is easy to remember, even though it’s been so long since she’s used it. She waits for the voice, and can’t stop herself from smiling when she hears it.

“Alex,” she says. “I love you. I’m coming home.”

//

END

//


End file.
